
't-e-^.^x.ce.^m 



MASTERPIECES 

OF 

AMERICAN ELOQUENCE 

REPRESENTATIVE ORATIONS ILLUSTRATING AMERICAN 
POLITICAL HISTORY 

CONTAINING ORATIONS BY PATRICK HENRY, ALEXANDER HAMILTON, GEORGE 

WASHINGTON, FISHER AMES, THOMAS JEFFERSON, JOHN RANDOLPH, 

JOSIAH QUINCY, HENRV CLAY, JOHN C. CALHOUN, DANIEL 

WEBSTER, WENDELL PHILLIPS, CHARLES SUMNER, 

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

WILLIAM If. SEWARD, JEFFERSON 

I'AVIS, ETC, ETC., ETC. 

Edited with very full Introductions 

BY 

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON 

PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE COLLEGE 
OF NEW JERSEY 



SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTTQN 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 

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COPYRIGHT BV 

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1884 

GIFT 

ESTATE OF 

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THE LIBRARY OF COIJGRESS^ 



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Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 



^ 



CONTENTS— Part I. 



PACK 

Introductory ..... . . I 

I.— COLONIALISM. 
The Formation of the Constitution ... 9 
Patrick Henry 18 

Convention of Delegates, March 28, 1775. " 

Patrick Henry 24 

On the Expediency of Adopting the Federal Consti- 
tution — Convention of Virginia, June 4, 1788. 

Alexander Hamilton .30 

On the Expediency of Adopting the Federal Consti- 
tution — Convention of New York, June 24, 1788. 

George Washington 44 

Inaugural Address as President of the United States. 
Kew York City, April 30, 1789. 

II.~COXSTITUTIONAL GO VERNMENT. 

Constitutional Government 55 

Fisher Ames 64 

On the British Treaty, House of Representatives, 
April 28, 1796. 

John Nicholas 83 

On the Proposed Repeal of the Sedition Law — House 
OF Representatives, February 25, 1799. 

V 

Vol. I. 



VI CONTENTS. 

III.— THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 

The Rise of Democracy gg 

Thomas Jefferson io8 

Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson, as President 
OF THE United States, March 4, 1801. 

Eliphalet Nott 117 

On the Death of Alexander Hamilton, July g, 1804 — 
Presbyterian Church, Albany, N. Y. 

John Randolph 129 

On the Militia Bill — House of Representatives, De- 
cember 10, iSii. 

Josiah Quincy 145 

On the Admission of Louisiana— House of Reprksenta- 
TiVKS, January 14, 1811 

Henry Clay 170 

On the War of 1812 — House of Representatives, Jan- 
uary 8, 1813. 

IV.— THE RISE OF NATIONALITY. 

The Rise of Nationality 183 

John C. Calhoun ig6 

On Nullification and the Force Bill, in the United 
States Senate, February 15, 1833. 

Robert Y. Hayne 213 

On Mr. Foot's Resolution, in the United States Senate, 
January 21, 1830. 

Daniel Webster 228 

In Reply to Hayne, in thb Unitbd States Senate, Jan- 
uary 36, 1830. 



CONTENTS— Part II. 



PAGB 

v.— THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

The Anti-Slavery Struggle 3 

Wendell Phillips 33 

On the Murder of Lovejoy ; Faneuil Hall, Boston, De- 
cember 8, 1837. 

John C. Calhoun 46 

On the Slavery Question ; Senate, March 4, 1850. 

Daniel Webster 84 

On the Constitution and the Union; Senate of the 
United States, March 7, 1850. 

Henry Clay 118 

On the Compromise of 1850 • United States Senate, July 
22, 1850. 

Wendell Phillips 135 

On the Philosophy of the Abolition Movement, before 
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, at Boston, 
January 27, 1853. 

Salmon Portland Chase 183 

On THE Kansas-Nebraska Bill ; Senate, February 3, 1854. 

Charles Sumner 212 

On THE Kansas-Nebraska Bill ; Senate, May 25, 1854. 

Stephen Arnold Douglas 218 

O.-i the Kansas-Nebraska Bill ; Senate, March 3, 1854. 

Charles SuiMner 256 

On the Crime against Kansas ; Senate, May 19-20, 1856. 
vii 
Vol. IT. 



vni CONTENTS. 

Preston S. Brooks 28g 

On thk Sumner Assault ; House of Rkpresrntatives, 
July 14, 1856. 

Anson Burlingame 297 

In Defence of Massachusbtts ; House of Representa- 
tives, June 21, 1856. 

Thomas L. Clingman 307 

On " Debates " in Congress ; House of Representatives, 
July 9, 1856. 



CONTENl'S— Part III. 



v.— THE AA'ri-SLAVEKY STRUGGLE. 

(Continued from Vol. II.) page 

Abraham Lincoln 3 

On His Nomination to the United States Senate, at 
THE Republican State Convention Springfield, Ills., 
June 17, 1858. 

Stephen Arnold Douglas 17 

In Reply to Mr. Lincoln ; Fkeeport, Ills., August 27, 
i86i. 

John Cabell Breckenridge 28 

On the Dred-Scott Decision ; before the Kentucky 
Legislature, December, 1859. 

Wm. H. Seward 43 

On the Irrepressible Conflict ; Rochester, October 25, 



49 



VI.— SECESSION. 

Secession 

Thomas L. Clingman 63 

On Secession; Border-Slate Opinion (Anti-Coercion); 
IN THE United States Senate, December 4, i860. 

John Jordan Crittenben 72 

On Secession; Border-State Oi'inion (Unionist); in the 
United States Senate, December 4, i860. 

Alfred Iverson 76 

On Secession ; Secessionist Opinion ; in thk Unitbd 
States Senate, December 5, i86o. 

ix 
Vol. 111. 



CONTENTS. 



PAG8 

Robert Toombs 87 

On Secession ; Secessionist Opinion ; in the United 
States Senate, January 7, 1861. 

John Parker Hale 105 

On Secession ; Moderate Republican Opinion ; in the 
United States Senate, December 5, i860. 

Thaddeus Stevens no 

On Secession ; Radical Republican Opinion ; in the 
House of Representatives, January 29, 1861. 

Samuel Sullivan Cox 117 

On Secession ; Douglas Democratic Opinion ; in the 
House of Representatives, January 14, 1861. 

VII.— CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 
Civil War and Reconstruction .... 127 
Abraham Lincoln 141 

First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861. 

Jefferson Davis 157 

Inaugural Address, Montgomery, Ala., February 18, 1861. 

Alexander Hamilton Stephens .... 164 

The "Corner-Stone" Address; Athen.«:um, Savannah, 
Ga., March 21, 1861. 

Stephen Arnold Douglas 176 

On the War ; Address to the Illinois Legislature, 
Springfield, Ills., April 25, i86i. 

Clement L. Vallandigham 187 

On the War and Its Conduct ; House of Representatives, 
January 14, 1863. 

Carl Schurz 198 

On the Democratic War Policy ; Academy of Music, 
Milwaukee, October 28, 1864. 

Henry Ward Beecher 213 

Address at Liverpool, October 16, 1863. 



CONTENTS. xi 

PAGB 

Abraham Lincoln 243 

The Gettysbukgh Address, November 19, 1863. 

Abraham Lincoln 245 

Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. 
Henry Winter Davis 249 

On Reconstruction ; the First Republican Theoky ; 
House of Representatives, March 22, 1864. 

George H. Pendleton 261 

On Reconstruction ; the Democratic Theory ; House ok 
Representatives, May 4, 1864. 

John Sherman 269 

On President Johnson's Policy ; United States Senate, 
February 23, 1866. 

Thaddeus Stevens 275 

On the First Reconstruction Bill ; House of Representa- 
tives, January 3, 1867. 

James Abram Garfield 283 

On the Reaction Against Reconstruction ; Hoisk of 
Representatives, March 29, 1879. 

Joseph C. S. Blackburn 298 

Reply to Mr. Garfield ; House of Representatives, 
April 3, 1879. 

Atticus G. Havgood 311 

Thanksgiving Sermon, the New South ; Emory College, 
Oxford, Ga., November 25, 1880. 

VIII.— FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

Free Trade and Protection 327 

Henry Clay 338 

On the American System ; in the United States Senate, 
February 2-6, 1832. 

Frank H. Hurd 374 

A Tariff for Revenue Only ; Housbof Representatives, 
February i8, i88i. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PART I. 

PAGE 

George Washington, by Stuart . . Frontispiece 

Alexander Hamilton 30 

Thomas Jefferson 108 

John Randolph 130 

PART III. 

Abraham Lincoln 4 

John Cabell Breckenridge 28 

James A. Garfield 28+ 



« INTRODUCTORY. 

All authorities are agreed that the political 
history of the United States, beyond much that 
is feeble or poor in quality, has given to the 
English language very many of its most finished 
and most persuasive specimens of oratory. It 
is natural that oratory should be a power in a re- 
public ; but, in the American republic, the force 
of institutions has been reinforced by that of a 
language which is peculiarly adapted to the dis- 
play of eloquence. Collections of American 
orations have been numerous and useful, but 
the copiousness of the material has always 
proved a source of embarrassment. Where the 
supply is so abundant, it is exceedingly difficult 
to make selections on any exact system, and 
yet impossible to include all that has a fair 
claim to the distinctive stamp of oratory. The 
results have been that our coUeci-ions of public 
I 



2 IN TROD UCTOR V. 

speeches have proved either unsatisfactory or 
unreasonably voluminous. 

The design which has controlled the present 
collection has been to make such selections from 
the great orations of American history as shall 
show most clearly the spirit and motives which 
have actuated its leaders, and to connect them 
by a thread of commentary which shall convey 
the practical results of the conflicts of opinion 
revealed in the selections. In the execution of 
such a work much must be allowed for personal 
limitations ; that which would seem representa- 
tive to one would not seem at all representative 
to others. It will not be difficult to mark omis- 
sions, some of which may seem to mar the com- 
pleteness of the work very materially ; the only 
claim advanced is that the w^ork has been done 
with a consistent desire to show the best side of 
all lines of thought which have seriously modi- 
fied the course of American history. Some 
great names will be missed from the list of 
orators, and some great addresses from the list 
of orations ; the apology for their omission is 



IN TROD UCTOR V. 3 

that they have not seemed to be so closely re- 
lated to the current of American history or so 
operative upon its course as to demand their in- 
sertion. Any errors under this head have oc- 
curred in spite of careful consideration and 
anxious desire to be scrupulously impartial. 

Very many of the orations selected have been 
condensed by the omission of portions which 
had no relevancy to the purpose in hand, or 
were of only a temporary interest and impor- 
tance. Such omissions have been indicated, so 
that the reader need not be misled, while the 
effort has been made to so manage the omissions 
as to maintain a complete logical connection 
among the parts which have been put to use. 
A tempting method of preserving such a con- 
nection is, of course, the insertion of words or 
sentences which the speaker might have used, 
though he did not ; but such a method seemed 
too dangerous and possibly too misleading, and 
it has been carefully avoided. None of the selec- 
tions contain a word of foreign matter, with 
the exception of one of Randolph's speeches 



4 INTROD UCTOR Y. 

and Mr. Beecher's Liverpool speech, where the 
matter inserted has been taken from the only 
available report, and is not likely to mislead the 
reader. For very much the same reason, foot- 
notes have been avoided, and the speakers have 
been left to speak for themselves. 

Such a process of omission will reveal to any 
one who undertakes it an underlying character- 
istic of our later, as distinguished from our 
earlier, oratory. The careful elaboration of the 
parts, the restraint of each topic treated to its 
appropriate part, and the systematic develop- 
ment of the parts into a symmetrical whole, are 
as markedly present in the latter as they are 
absent in the former. The process of selection 
has therefore been progressively more difficult 
as the subject-matter has approached contem- 
porary times. In our earlier orations, the dis- 
tinction and separate treatment of the parts is 
so carefully observed that it has been compara- 
tively an easy task to seize and appropriate the 
parts especially desirable. In our later orations, 
with some exceptions, there is an evidently de- 



IN TROD UCTOR Y. 5 

creasing attention to system. The whole is 
often a collection of disjecta membra of argu- 
ments, so interdependent that omissions of any 
sort are exceedingly dangerous to the meaning 
of the speaker. To do justice to his meaning, 
and give the whole oration, would be an impos- 
sible strain on the space available ; to omit any 
portion is usually to lose one or more buttresses 
of some essential feature in his argument. The 
distinction is submitted without any desire to 
explain it on theory, but only as a suggestion 
of a practical difficulty in a satisfactory execu- 
tion of the work. 

The general division of the work has been 
into (l) Colonialism, to 1789; (2) Constitutional 
Government, to 1801 ; (3) the Rise of Democ- 
racy, to 1 81 5; (4) the Rise of Nationality, to 
1840; (5) the Slavery struggle, to i860; (6) Se- 
cession and Reconstruction, to 1876 ; (7) Free 
Trade and Protection. In such a division, it has 
been found necessary to include, in a few cases, 
orations which have not been strictly within the 
time limits of the topic, but have had a close 



O INTRODUCTORY. 

logical connection with it. It is hoped, how- 
ever, that all such cases will show their own ne- 
cessity too clearly for any need of further ex- 
planation or excuse. 

The work will be completed in three volumes. 

Princeton, N. J., July i, 1884. 



PART I. 



I. 

COLONIALISM. 

THE FORMATION OF THE CON- 
STITUTION. 



I. 

COLONIALISM. 

THE FORMATION OF THE CON- 
STITUTION. 

It has been said by an excellent authority 
that the Constitution was " extorted from the 
grinding necessities of a reluctant people." 
The truth of the statement is very quickly rec- 
ognized by even the most surface student of 
American politics. The struggle which be- 
gan in 1774-5 was the direct outcome of the 
spirit of independence. Rather than submit to 
a degrading government by the arbitrary will 
of a foreign Parliament, the Massachusetts 
people chose to enter upon an almost unprece- 
dented war of a colony against the mother 
country. Rather than admit the precedent of 
the oppression of a sister colony, the other 
9 



lO COLONIALISM. 

colonies chose to support Massachusetts in her 
resistance. Resistance to Parliament involved 
resistance to the Crown, the only power which 
had hitherto claimed the loyalty of the colo- 
nists ; and one evil feature of the Revolution 
was that the spirit of loyalty disappeared for a 
time from American politics. There were, 
without doubt, many individual cases of loyalty 
to " Continental interests " ; but the mass of 
the people had merely unlearned their loyalty 
to the Crown, and had learned no other loyalty 
to take its place. Their nominal allegiance 
to the individual colony was weakened by their 
underlying consciousness that they really were 
a part of a greater nation ; their national 
allegiance had never been claimed by any 
power. 

The weakness of the confederation was ap- 
parent even before its complete ratification. 
The Articles of Confederation were proposed 
by the Continental Congress, Nov. 15, 1777. 
They were ratified by eleven States during the 
year 1778, and Delaware ratified in 1779. 



COrONIALTSM. II 

Maryland alone held out and refused to ratify 
for two years longer. Her long refusal was 
due to her demand for a national control of the 
Western territory, which many of the States 
were trying to appropriate. It was not until 
there was positive evidence that the Western 
territory was to be national property that 
Maryland acceded to the articles, and they 
went into operation. The interval had given 
time for study of them, and their defects were 
so patent that there was no great expectation 
among thinking men of any other result than 
that which followed. The national power which 
the confederation sought to create was an en- 
tire nonentity. There was no executive power, 
except committees of Congress, and these had 
no powers to execute. Congress had practi- 
cally only the power to recommend to the States. 
It had no power to tax, to support armies or 
navies, to provide for the interest or payment 
of the public debt, to regulate commerce or in- 
ternal affairs, or to perform any other function 
of an efificient national government. It was 



12 COLONIALISM. 

merely a convenient instrument of repudiation 
for the States ; Congress was to borrow money 
and incur debts, which the States could refuse 
or neglect to provide for. Under this system 
affairs steadily drifted from bad to worse for 
some six years after the formal ratification of 
the articles. There seemed to be no remedy 
in the forms of law, for the articles expressly 
provided that no alteration was to be made ex- 
cept by the assent of every State. Congress 
proposed alterations, such as the temporary 
grant to Congress of power to levy duties on 
imports ; but these* proposals were always 
vetoed by one or more states. 

In 1780, in a private letter, Hamilton had 
suggested a convention of the States to revise 
the articles, and as affairs grew worse the prop- 
osition was renewed by others. The first at- 
tempt to hold such a convention, on the call of 
Virginia, was a failure ; but five States sent 
delegates to Annapolis, and these wisely con- 
tented themselves with recommending another 
convention in the following year. Congress 



COLONIALISM. 1 3 

was persuaded to endorse this summons ; twelve 
of the States chose delegates, and the conven- 
tion met at Philadelphia, May, 14, 1787. A 
quorum was obtained, May 25th, and the de- 
liberations of the convention lasted until Sept. 
28th, when the Constitution was reported to 
Congress. 

The difficulties which met the convention 
were mainly the results of the division of the 
States into large and small States. Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, and 
Georgia, the States which claimed to extend to 
the Mississippi on the west and cherished in- 
definite expectations of future growth, were the 
" large " States. They desired to give as much 
power as possible to the new national govern- 
ment, on condition that the government should 
be so framed that they should have control of 
it. The remaining States were properly " small " 
states, and desired to form a government which 
would leave as much power as possible to the 
States. Circumstances ^yorked strongly in favor 
of a reasonable result. There never were more 



1 4 COLONIALISM. 

than eleven States in the convention. Rhode 
Island, a small State, sent no delegates. The 
New Hampshire delegates did not appear until 
the New York delegates (except Hamilton) had 
lost patience and retired from the convention. 
Pennsylvania was usually neutral. The con- 
vention was thus composed of five large, five 
small, and one neutral State ; and almost all its 
decisions were the outcome of judicious com- 
promise. 

The large States at first proposed a Congress 
in both of whose Houses the State representa- 
tion should be proportional. They would thus 
have had a clear majority in both Houses, and, 
as Congress was to elect the President, and 
other ofificers, the government would thus have 
been a large State government. When "the 
little States gained their point," by forcing 
through the equal representation of the States 
in the Senate, the unsubstantial nature of the 
" national " pretensions of the large States at 
once became apparent. . The opposition to the 
whole scheme centred in the large States, with 



COLONIALISM. 1$ 

very considerable assistance from New York, 
which was not satisfied with the concessions 
which the small States had obtained in the con- 
vention. The difficulty of ratification may be 
estimated from the final votes in the following 
State conventions : Massachusetts, 187 to 168; 
New Hampshire, 57 to 46 ; Virginia, 89 to 79 ; 
and New York, 30 to 27. It should also be 
noted that the last two ratifications were only 
made after the ninth State (New Hampshire) 
had ratified, and when it was certain that the 
Constitution would go into effect with or with- 
out the ratification of Virginia or New York. 
North Carolina did not ratify until 1789, and 
Rhode Island not until 1790. 

The division between North and South also 
appeared in the convention. In order to carry 
over the Southern States to the support of the 
final compromise, it was necessary to insert a 
guarantee of the slave trade for twenty years, 
and a provision that three fifths of the slaves 
should be counted in estimating the population 
for State representation in Congress. But these 



l6 COLONIALISM. 

provisions, so far as we can judge from the de- 
bates of the time, had no influence against the 
ratification of the Constitution ; the struggle 
turned on the differences between the national 
leaders, aided by the satisfied small States, on 
one side, and the leaders of the State party, 
aided by the dissatisfied States, large and small, 
on the other. The former, the Federalists, were 
successful, though by very narrow majorities in 
several of the States. Washington was unani- 
mously elected the first President of the Re- 
public ; and the new government was inaugu- 
rated at New York, March 4, 1789. 

The speech of Henry in the Virginia House 
of Delegates has been chosen as perhaps the 
best representative of the spirit which impelled 
and guided the Revolution itself; and apart of 
the same orator's argument against the Consti- 
tution in the Virginia convention will show the 
manner in which the survival of the same spirit 
acted against the adoption of an efficient gov- 
ernment. It is fortunate that the ablest of the 
national leaders was placed in the very focus of 



COLONIALISM. 1/ 

opposition to the Constitution, so that we may- 
take Hamilton's argument in the New York 
convention as the most carefully stated con- 
clusion of the master-mind of the Federal party. 
To indicate the result the inaugural address of 
President Washington has been added. 



PATRICK HENRY, 

OF VIRGINIA 

(born 1736, DIED 1799). 



CONVENTION OF DELEGATES, MARCH 28, 1775. 

Mr. President: 

No man thinks more highly than I do of the 
patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very 
worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the 
House. But different men often see the same 
subject in different lights; and, therefore, I 
hope that it will not be thought disrespectful 
to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do, 
opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, 
I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and 
without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. 
The question before the House is one of awful 
moment to this country. For my own part I 
consider it as nothing less than a question of 
freedom or slavery ; and in proportion to the 
magnitude of the subject ought to be the free- 
dom of the debate. It is only in this way that 
I? 



I 



CONVENTION OF DELEGATES. I9 

we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfil the 
great responsibility which we hold to God and 
our country. Should I keep back my opinions 
at such a time, through fear of giving offence, 
I should consider myself as guilty of treason 
toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty 
toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere 
above all earthly kings. 

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge 
in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut 
our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to 
the song of that syren, till she transforms us 
into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, 
engaged in a great and arduous struggle for 
liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number 
of those who, having eyes, see not, and having 
ears, hear not, the things which so nearly con- 
cern their temporal salvation ? For my part, 
whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am 
willing to know the whole truth ; to know the 
worst and to provide for it. 

I have but one lamp by which my feet are 
guided ; and that is the lamp of experience. I 
know of no way of judging of the future but by 
the past. And judging by the past, I wish to 
know what there has been in the conduct of 
the British ministry for the last ten years, to 



20 FA TRICK HENR Y. 

justify those hopes with which gentlemen have 
been pleased to solace themselves and the 
House ? Is it that insidious smile with which 
our petition has been lately received ? Trust it 
not, sir ; it will prove a snare to your feet. 
Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a 
kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious recep- 
tion of our petition comports with these war- 
like preparations which cover our waters and 
darken our land. Are fleets and armies neces- 
sary to a work of love and reconciliation ? 
Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be 
reconciled, that force must be called in to win 
back our love ? Let us not deceive ourselves, 
sir. These are the implements of war and 
subjugation ; the last arguments to which kings 
resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this 
martial array, if its purpose be not to force us 
to submission ? Can gentlemen assign any 
other possible motives for it ? Has Great 
Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, 
to call for all this accumulation of navies and 
armies? No, sir, she has none. They are 
meant for us ; they can be meant for no other. 
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us 
those chains which the British ministr}^ have 
been so long forging. And what have we to 



CONVENTION OF DELEGATES. 21 

oppose to them? Shall we try argument? 
Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten 
years. HaVe we any thing new to offer on the 
subject? Nothing. We have held the subject 
up in every light of which it is capable ; but it 
has been all in vain. Shall we resort to en- 
treaty and humble supplication ? What terms 
shall we find which have not been already 
exhausted ? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, 
deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done 
every thing that could be done, to avert the 
storm which is no^y coming on. We have 
petitioned ; we have remonstrated ; we have 
supplicated ; we have prostrated ourselves be- 
fore the throne, and have implored its interpo- 
sition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the 
ministry and parliament. Our petitions have 
been slighted; our remonstrances have pro- 
duced additional violence and insult ; our sup- 
plications have been disregarded ; and we have 
been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of 
the throne. In vain, after these things, may 
we indulge the fond hope of peace and recon- 
ciliation. There is no longer any room for 
hope. If we wish to be free — if we mean to 
preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges 
for which we have been so long contending — if 



22 PA TRICK HENR V. 

we mean not basely to abandon the noble 
struggle in which we have been so long en- 
gaged, and which we have pledged ourselves 
never to abandon until the glorious object of 
our contest shall be obtained, we must fight ! 
I repeat it, sir, we must fight ! An appeal to 
arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left 
us I 

They tell us, sir, that we are weak ; unable 
to cope with so formidable an adversary. But 
when shall we be stronger? Will it be the 
next week, or the next year? Will it be when 
we are totally disarmed, and when a British 
guard shall be stationed in every house ? Shall 
we gather strength by irresolution and inaction ? 
Shall we acquire the means of effectual resist- 
ance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hug- 
ging the delusive phantom of hope, until our 
enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? 
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use 
of the means which the God of nature hath 
placed in our power. Three millions of people, 
armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such 
a country as that which we possess, are invin- 
cible by any force which our enemy can send 
against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our 
battles alone. There is a just God who presides 



CONVENTION OF DELEGATES. 2% 

over the destinies of nations; and who will 
raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The 
battle, sir, is not to the strong alone ; it is to 
the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, 
sir, we have no election. If we were base 
enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire 
from the contest. There is no retreat, but in 
submission and slavery ! Our chains are forged ! 
Their clanking may be heard on the plains of 
Boston ! The war is inevitable — and let it 
come ! I repeat it, sir, let it come ! 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. 
Gentlemen may cry peace, peace — but there is 
no peace. The war is actually begun ! The 
next gale that sweeps from the north will 
bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! 
Our brethren are already in the field ! Why 
stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen 
wish ? What would they have ? Is life so dear, 
or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
price of chains and slavery? Forbid it. Al- 
mighty God ! I know not what course others 
may take ; but as for me, give me liberty, or 
give me death ! 



PATRICK HENRY, 

OF VIRGINIA. 



ON THE EXPEDIENCY OF ADOPTING THE FEDERAL 

CONSTITUTION CONVENTION OF VIRGINIA, 

JUNE 4, 1788. 

Mr. Chairman : 

The public mind, as well as my own, is ex- 
tremely uneasy at the proposed change of 
government. Give me leave to form one of 
the number of those who wish to be thoroughly 
acquainted with the reasons of this perilous 
and uneasy situation, and why we are brought 
hither to decide on this great national ques- 
tion. I consider myself as the servant of the 
people of this commonwealth, as a sentinel 
over their rights, liberty, and happiness. I 
represent their feelings when I say, that they 
are exceedingly uneasy, being brought from 
that state of full security, which they enjoy 
to the present delusive appearance of things. 
Before the meeting of the late Federal conven- 
24 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 2$ 

tion at Philadelphia, a general peace and an 
universal tranquillity prevailed in this country, 
and the minds of our citizens were at perfect 
repose ; but since that period, they are ex- 
ceedingly uneasy and disquieted. When I 
wished for an appointment to this convention, 
my mind was extremely agitated for the situa- 
tion of public affairs. I conceive the republic 
to be in extreme danger. If our situation be 
thus uneasy, whence has arisen this fearful 
jeopardy? It arises from this fatal system; 
it arises from a proposal to change our govern- 
ment — a proposal that goes to the utter an- 
nihilation of the most solemn engagements of 
the States — a proposal of establishing nine 
States into a confederacy, to the eventual ex- 
clusion of four States. It goes to the annihila- 
tion of those solemn treaties we have formed 
with foreign nations. The present circum- 
stances of France, the good offices rendered 
us by that kingdom, require our most faithful 
and most punctual adherence to our treaty 
with her. We are in alliance with the Span- 
iards, the Dutch, the Prussians ; those treaties 
bound us as thirteen States, confederated to- 
gether. Yet here is a proposal to sever that 
confederacy. Is it possible that we shall 



26 PATRICK HENRY. 

abandon all our treaties and national engage- 
ments ? And for what ? I expected to have 
heard the reasons of an event so unexpected 
to my mind, and many others. Was our 
civil polity or public justice endangered or 
sapped ? Was the real existence of the country 
threatened, or was this preceded by a mourn- 
ful progression of events? This proposal of 
altering our Federal government is of a most 
alarming nature : make the best of this new 
government — say it is composed by any thing 
but inspiration — you ought to be extremely 
cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty; 
for instead of securing your rights, you may 
lose them forever. If a wrong step be now 
made, the republic may be lost forever. If this 
new government will not come up to the ex- 
pectation of the people, and they should be dis- 
appointed, their liberty will be lost, and tyr- 
anny must and will arise. I repeat it again, 
and beg, gentlemen, to consider, that a wrong 
step, made now, will plunge us into misery, and 
our republic will be lost. It will be necessary 
for this convention to have a faithful historical 
detail of the facts, that preceded the session of 
the Federal convention, and the reasons that 
actuated its members in proposing an entire al- 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 2^ 

teration of government — and to demonstrate the 
dangers that awaited us. If they were of such 
awful magnitude, as to warrant a proposal so 
extremely perilous as this, I must assert, that 
this convention has an absolute right to a 
thorough discovery of every circumstance rela- 
tive to this great event. And here I would 
make this inquiry of those worthy characters 
who composed a part of the late Federal con- 
vention. I am sure they were fully impressed 
with the necessity of forming a great consoli- 
dated government instead of a confederation. 
That this is a consolidated government is de- 
monstrably clear ; and the danger of such a 
government is, to my mind, very striking. I 
have the highest veneration for those gentle- 
men ; but, sir, give me leave to demand, what 
right had they to say, "We, the People " ? My 
political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious 
solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to 
ask, who authorized them to speak the language 
of, " We, the People," instead of We, the 
States ? States are the characteristics and the 
soul of a confederation. If the States be not 
the agents of this compact, it must be one 
great consolidated national government of the 
people of all the States. I have the highest re^ 



28 PATRICK HENRY. 

spect for those gentlemen who formed the con- 
vention ; and were some of them not here, I 
would express some testimonal of esteem for 
them. America had on a former occasion put 
the utmost confidence in them ; a confidence 
which was well placed ; and I am sure, sir, I 
would give up any thing to them ; I would 
cheerfully confide in them as my representa- 
tives. But, sir, on this great occasion, I would 
demand the cause of their conduct. Even from 
that illustrious man who saved us by his valor, 
I would have a reason for his conduct ; that 
liberty which he has given us by his valor tells 
me to ask this reason, and sure I am, were he 
here, he would give us that reason ; but there 
are other gentlemen here who can give us this 
information. The people gave them no power 
to use their name. That they exceeded their 
power is perfectly clear. It is not mere curi- 
osity that actuates me ; I wish to hear the real, 
actual, existing danger, which should lead us to 
take those steps so dangerous in my concep- 
tion. Disorders have arisen in other parts of 
America, but here, sir, no danger, no insurrec- 
tion or tumult, has happened ; every thing has 
been calm and tranquil. But notwithstanding 
this, we are wandering on the great ocean of 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 29 

human affairs. I see no landmark to guide us. 
We are running we know not whither. Differ- 
ence in opinion has gone to the degree of in- 
flammatory resentment, in different parts of the 
country, which has been occasioned by this 
perilous innovation. The Federal convention 
ought to have amended the old system ; for 
this purpose, they were solely delegated ; the 
object of their mission extended to no other 
consideration. You must therefore forgive the 
solicitation of one unworthy member, to know 
what danger could have arisen under the pres- 
ent confederation, and what are the causes of 
this proposal to change our government. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 

OF NEW YORK 

(born 1757, DIED 1804). 



ON THE EXPEDIENCY OF ADOPTING THE FEDERAL 

CONSTITUTION — CONVENTION OF NEW YORK, 

JUNE 24, 1788. 

I AM persuaded, Mr. Chairman, that I in my 
turn shall be indulged, in addressing the com- 
mittee. We all, in equal sincerity, profess to be 
anxious for the establishment of a republican 
government, on a safe and solid basis. It is 
the object of the v^^ishes of every honest man in 
the United States, and I presume that I shall 
not be disbelieved, when I declare, that it is an 
object of all others, the nearest and most dear 
to my own heart. The means of accomplishing 
this great purpose become the most important 
study which can interest mankind. It is our 
duty to examine all those means with peculiar 
attention, and to choose the best and most 
effectual. It is our duty to draw from nature, 
30 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 3 1 

from reason, from examples, the best principles 
of policy, and to pursue and apply them in the 
formation of our government. We should con- 
template and compare the systems, which, in 
this examination, come under our view ; dis- 
tinguish, with a careful eye, the defects and ex- 
cellencies of each, and discarding the former, 
incorporate the latter, as far as circumstances 
will admit, into our Constitution, If we pursue 
a different course and neglect thisduty, we shall 
probably disappoint the expectations of our 
country and of the world. 

In the commencement of a revolution, which 
received its birth from the usurpations of tyr- 
anny, nothing was more' natural, than that 
the pubhc mind should be influenced by an ex- 
treme spirit of jealousy. To resist these en- 
croachments, and to nourish this spirit, was the 
great object of all our public and private in- 
stitutions. The zeal for liberty became pre- 
dominant and excessive. In forming our con- 
federation, this passion alone seemed to actuate 
us, and we appear to have had no other view 
than to secure ourselves from despotism. The 
object certainly was a valuable one, and de- 
served our utmost attention. But, sir, there is 
another object equally important, and which our 



32 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

enthusiasm rendered us little capable of regard- 
ing : I mean a principle of strength and stability 
in the organization of our government, and 
vigor in its operations. This purpose can 
never be accomplished but by the establish- 
ment of some select body, formed peculiarly 
upon this principle. There are few positions 
more demonstrable than that there should be in 
every republic, some permanent body to cor- 
rect the prejudices, check the intemperate pas- 
sions, and regulate the fluctuations of a popu- 
lar assembly. It is evident, that a body insti- 
tuted for these purposes, must be so formed 
as to exclude as much as possible from its own 
character, those infii*mities and that mutability 
which it is designed to remedy. It is therefore 
necessary that it should be small, that it should 
hold its authority during a considerable period, 
and that it should have such an independence 
in the exercise of its powers, as will divest it as 
much as possible of local prejudices. It should 
be so formed as to be the centre of political 
knowledge, to pursue always a steady line of 
conduct, and to reduce every irregular pro- 
pensity to system. Without this establishment, 
we may make experiments without end, but 
shall never have an efficient gfovernment. 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 33 

It is an unqestionable truth, that the body of 
the people in every country desire sincerely its 
prosperity ; but it is equally unquestionable, 
that they do not possess the discernment and 
stability necessary for systematic government. 
To deny that they are frequently led into the 
grossest errors by misinformation and passion, 
would be a flattery which their own good 
sense must despise. That branch of adminis- 
stration especially, which involves our political 
relations with foreign states, a community will 
ever be incompetent to. These truths are not 
often held up in public assemblies : but they 
cannot be unknown to any who hear me. From 
these principles it follows, that there ought to 
be two distinct bodies in our government : one, 
which shall be immediately constituted by and 
peculiarly represent the people, and possess all 
the popular features ; another, formed upon the 
principle, and for the purposes, before ex- 
plained. Such considerations as these induced 
the convention who formed your State con- 
stitution, to institute a Senate upon the present 
plan. The history of ancient and modern re- 
publics had taught them, that many of the 
evils which these republics had suffered, arose 
from the want of a certain balance and mutual 



34 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

control indispensable to a wise administration ; 
they were convinced that popular assemblies 
are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sud- 
den impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious 
men ; and that some firm barrier against these 
operations was necessary ; they, therefore, in- 
stituted your Senate, and the benefits we have 
experienced have fully justified their concep- 
tions. * * * 

Gentlemen, in their reasoning, have placed 
the interests of the several States, and those of 
the United States in contrast ; this is not a fair 
view of the subject ; they must necessarily be 
involved in each other. What we apprehend 
is, that some sinister prejudice, or some pre- 
vailing passion, may assume the form of a gen- 
uine interest. The influence of these is as 
powerful as the most permanent conviction of 
the public good ; and against this influence we 
ought to provide. The local interests of a 
State ought in every case to give way to the 
interests of the Union; for when a 'sacrifice of 
one or the other is necessary, the former be- 
comes only an apparent, partial interest, and 
should yield, on the principle that the small 
good ought never to oppose the great one. 
When you assemble from your several counties 



I 



TH^ FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 35 

in the Legislature, were every member to be 
guided only by the apparent interests of his 
county, government would be impracticable. 
There must be a perpetual accommodation and 
sacrifice of local advantages to general expedi- 
ency ; but the spirit of a mere popular assembly 
would rarely be actuated by this important 
principle. It is therefore absolutely necessary 
that the Senate should be so formed, as to be 
unbiassed by false conceptions of the real inter- 
ests, or undue attachment to the apparent 
good of their several States. 

Gentlemen indulge too many unreasonable 
apprehensions of danger to the State govern- 
ments ; they seem to suppose that the moment 
you put men into a national council, they be- 
come corrupt and tyrannical, and lose all their 
affection for their fellow-citizens. But can we 
imagine that the Senators will ever be so insen- 
sible of their own advantage, as to sacrifice the 
genuine interest of their constituents? The 
State governments are essentially necessary to 
the form and spirit of the general system. As 
long, therefore, as Congress has a full convic- 
tion of this necessity, they must, even upon 
principles purely national, have as firm an 
attachment to the one as to the other. This 



36 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

conviction can never leave them, unless they 
become madmen. While the constitution con- 
tinues to be read, and its principle known, the 
States must, by every rational man, be consid- 
ered as essential, component parts of The Union ; 
and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former 
to the latter is wholly inadmissible. 

The objectors do not advert to the natural 
strength and resources of State governments, 
which will ever give them an important superi- 
ority over the general government. If we 
compare the nature of their different powers, 
or the means of popular influence which each 
possesses, we shall find the advantage entirely 
on the side of the States. This consideration, 
important as it is, seems to have been little 
attended to. The aggregate number of repre- 
sentatives throughout the States may be two 
thousand. Their personal influence will, there- 
fore, be proportionably more extensive than 
that of one or two hundred men in Congress. 
The State establishments of civil and military 
ofificers of every description, infinitely surpas- 
sing in number any possible correspondent 
establishments in the general government, will 
create such an extent and complication of 
attachments, as will ever secure the predilection 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 37 

and support of the people. Whenever, there- 
fore, Congress shall meditate any infringement 
of the State constitutions, the great body of the 
people will naturally take part with their do- 
mestic representatives. Can the general gov- 
ernment withstand such an united opposition ? 
Will the people suffer themselves to be stripped 
of their privileges ? Will they suffer their Leg- 
islatures to be reduced to a shadow and a name? 
The idea is shocking to common-sense. 

From the circumstances already explained, 
and many others which might be mentioned, 
results a complicated, irresistible check, which 
must ever support the existence and impor- 
tance of the State governments. The danger, 
if any exists, flows from an opposite source. 
The probable evil is, that the general govern- 
ment will be too dependent on the State Legis- 
latures, too much governed by their prejudices, 
and too obsequious to their humors; that the 
States, with every power in their hands, will 
make encroachments on the national authority, 
till the Union is weakened and dissolved. 

Every member must have been struck with 
an observation of a gentleman from Albany. 
Do what you will, says he, local predjudices 
and opinions will go into the government- 



38 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

What ! shall we then form a constitution to 
cherish and strengthen these prejudices? Shall 
we confirm the distemper, instead of remedying 
it. It is undeniable that there must be a control 
somewhere. Either the general interest is to 
control the particular interests, or the contrary. 
If the former, then certainly the government 
ought to be so framed, as to render the power 
of control efificient to all intents and purposes ; 
if the latter, a striking absurdity follows; the 
controlling powers must be as numerous as the 
varying interests, and the operations of the 
government must therefore cease ; for the mo- 
ment you accommodate these different interests, 
which is the only way to set the government in 
motion, you establish a controlling power. 
Thus, whatever constitutional provisions are 
made to the contrary, every government will be 
at last driven to the necessity of subjecting the 
partial to the universal interest. The gentle- 
men ought always, in their reasoning, to dis- 
tinguish between the real, genuine good of a 
State, and the opinions and prejudices which 
may prevail respecting it ; the latter may be 
opposed to the general good, and consequently 
ought to be sacrificed ; the former is so in- 
volved in it, that it never can be sacrificed. 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 39 

There are certain social principles in human 
nature from which we may draw the most solid 
conclusions with respect to the conduct of in- 
dividuals and of communities. We love our 
families more than our neighbors ; we love our 
neighbors more than our countrymen in gen- 
eral. The human affections, like the solar heat, 
lose their intensity as they depart from the 
centre, and become languid in proportion to 
the expansion of the circle on which they act. 
On these principles, the attachment of the indi- 
vidual will be first and forever secured by the 
State governments ; they will be a mutual pro- 
tection and support. Another source of influ- 
ence, which has already been pointed out, is 
the various official connections in the States. 
Gentlemen endeavor to evade the force of this 
by saying that these offices will be insignificant. 
This is by no means true. The State officers 
will ever be important, because they are neces- 
sary and useful. Their powers are such as are 
extremely interesting to the people ; such as 
affect their property, their liberty, and life. 
What is more important than the administra- 
tion of justice and the execution of the civil 
and criminal laws ? Can the State govern- 
ments become insignificant while they have 



40 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

the power of raising money independently and 
without control ? If they are really useful ; if 
they are calculated to promote the essential 
interests of the people ; they must have their 
confidence and support. The States can never 
lose their powers till the whole people of 
America are robbed of their liberties. These 
must go together ; they must support each 
other, or meet one common fate. On the gen- 
tleman's principle, we may safely trust the 
State governments, though we have no means 
of resisting them ; but we cannot confide in 
the national government, though we have an 
effectual constitutional guard against every en- 
croachment. This is the essence of their argu- 
ment, and it is false and fallacious beyond con- 
ception. 

With regard to the jurisdiction of the two 
governments, I shall certainly admit that the 
Constitution ought to be so formed as not to 
prevent the States from providing for their 
own existence ; and I maintain that it is so 
formed ; and that their power of providing for 
themselves is sufficiently established. This is 
conceded by one gentleman, and in the next 
breath the concession is retracted. He says 
Congress has but one exclusive right in taxa- 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 4I 

tion — that of duties on imports ; certainly, 
then, their other powers are only concurrent. 
But to take off the force of this obvious conclu- 
sion, he immediately says that the laws of the 
United States are supreme ; and that where 
there is one supreme there cannot be a concur- 
rent authority ; and further, that where the 
laws of the Union are supreme, those of the 
States must be subordinate ; because there can- 
not be two supremes. This is curious sophistry. 
That two supreme powers cannot act together 
is false. They are inconsistent only when they 
are aimed at each other or at one indivisible 
object. The laws of the United States are su- 
preme, as to all their proper, constitutional ob- 
jects ; the laws of the States are supreme in 
the same way. These supreme laws may act 
on different objects without clashing ; or they 
may operate on different parts of the same 
common object with perfect harmony. Sup- 
pose both governments should lay a tax of a 
penny on a certain article ; has not each an in- 
dependent and uncontrollable power to collect 
its own tax? The meaning of the maxim, 
there cannot be two supremes, is simply this — 
two powers cannot be supreme over each other. 
This meaning is entirely perverted by the gen- 



4^ ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

tlemen. But, it is said, disputes between col- 
lectors are to be referred to the federal courts. 
This is again wandering in the field of conjec- 
ture. But suppose the fact is certain ; is it not 
to be presumed that they will express the true 
meaning of the Constitution and the laws ? 
Will they not be bound to consider the con- 
current jurisdiction ; to declare that both the 
taxes shall have equal operation ; that both 
the powers, in that respect, are sovereign and 
co-extensive? If they transgress their duty, 
we are to hope that they will be punished. 
Sir, we can reason from probabilities alone. 
When we leave common-sense, and give our- 
selves up to conjecture, there can be no cer- 
tainty, no security in our reasonings. 

I imagine I have stated to the committee 
abundant reasons to prove the entire safety of 
the State governments and of the people. I 
would go into a more minute consideration of 
the nature of the concurrent jurisdiction, and 
the operation of the laws in relation to reve- 
nue ; but at present I feel too much indisposed 
to proceed. I shall, with leave of the commit- 
tee, improve another opportunity of expressing 
to them more fully my ideas on this point. I 
wish the committee to remember that the Con- 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 43 

stitution under examination is framed upon 
truly republican principles ; and that, as it is 
expressly designed to provide for the common 
protection and the general welfare of the 
United States, it must be utterly repugnant to 
this Constitution to subvert the State govern- 
ments or oppress the people. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON, 

OF VIRGINIA. 

(born 1732, DIED 1799). 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED 
STATES. NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 30, 1 789. 

Fellow-citizens of the Senate, and of the 
House of Representatives. — Among the vicissi- 
tudes incident to life, no event could have filled 
me with greater anxieties, than that of which 
the notification was transmitted by your order, 
and received on the fourteenth day of the present 
month. On the one hand, I was summoned by 
my country, whose voice I can never hear but 
with veneration and love, from a retreat which 
I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and 
in my flattering hopes with an immutable de- 
cision as the asylum of my declining years ; a 
retreat which was rendered every day more 
necessary, as well as more dear to me, by the 
addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent 
interruptions in my health to the gradual waste 
44 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 45 

committed on it by time. On the other hand, 
the magnitude and difficulty of the trust, to 
which the voice of my country called me, be- 
ing sufficient to waken in the wisest and most 
experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny 
into his own qualifications, could not but over- 
whelm with despondence one, who, inheriting 
inferior endowments from, nature, and unprac- 
tised in the duties of civil administration, ought 
to be peculiarly conscious of his own defi- 
ciencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare 
aver, is, that it has been my faithful study to 
collect my duty from a just appreciation of 
every circumstance by which it might be af- 
fected. All I dare hope is, that if, in executing 
this task, I have been too much swayed by a 
grateful remembrance of former instances, or 
by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent 
proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, 
and have thence too little consulted my inca- 
pacity as well as disinclination for the weighty 
and untried cares before me, my error will be 
palliated by the motives which misled me, and 
its consequences be judged by my country, 
with some share of the partiality in which they 
originated. 

Such being the impression under which I 



4^ GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

have, in obedience to the public summons, re- 
paired to the present station, it would be pecul- 
iarly improperto omit in this first official act, 
my fervent supplications to that Almighty Be- 
ing who rules over the universe — who presides 
in the councils of nations — and whose provi- 
dential aids can supply every human defect, 
that his benediction may consecrate to the lib- 
erties and happiness of the people of the 
United States, a government \ instituted by 
themselves for these essential purposes ; and 
may enable every instrument, employed in its 
administration, to execute with success, the 
functions allotted to his charge. In tendering 
this homage to the great author of every pub- 
lic and private good, I assure myself that it 
expresses your sentiments not less than my 
own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large, 
less than either. No people can be bound to 
acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, 
which conducts the affairs of men, more than 
the people of the United States. Every step 
by which they have advanced to the character 
of an independent nation, seems to have been 
distinguished by some token of providential 
agency ; and in the important revolution just 
accomplished in the system of their united gov- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 47 

ernment, the tranquil deliberations and vol- 
untary consent of so many distinct communi- 
ties, from which the event has resulted, cannot 
be compared with the means by which most 
governments have been established, without 
some return of pious gratitude along with an 
humble anticipation of the future blessings 
which the past seems to presage. These reflec- 
tions, arising out of the present crisis, have 
forced themselves too strongly on my mind to 
be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, 
in thinking that there are none under the in- 
fluence of which the proceedings of a new and 
free government can more auspiciouly com- 
mence. 

By the article establishing the executive de- 
partment, it is made the duty of the President 
"to recommend to your consideration, such 
measures as he shall judge necessary and ex- 
pedient." The circumstances under which I 
now meet you will acquit me from entering into 
that subject, further than to refer to the great 
constitutional charter under which you are 
assembled ; and which, in defining your powers, 
designates the objects to which your attention 
is to be given. It will be more consistent with 
those circumstances, and far more congenial 



48 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

with the feelings which actuate me, to substi- 
tute in place of a recommendation of particular 
measures the tribute that is due to the talents, 
the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn 
the characters selected to devise and adopt 
them. In these honorable qualifications, I be- 
hold the surest pledges, that as, on one side, no 
local prejudices or attachments, no separate 
views, nor party animosities, will misdirect the 
comprehensive and equal eye which ought to 
watch over this great assemblage of communi- 
ties and interests ; so on another, that the 
foundations of our national policy will be laid 
in the pure and immutable principles of private 
morality ; and the preeminence of free govern- 
ment be exemplified by all the attributes which 
can win the affections of its citizens, and com- 
mand the respect of the world. I dwell on this 
prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent 
love for my country can inspire ; since there is 
no truth more thoroughly established, than 
that there exists in the economy and course of 
nature, an indissoluble union between virtue 
and happiness, between duty and advantage, 
between the genuine maxims of an honest and 
magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of 
public prosperity and felicity ; since we ought 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 49 

to be no less persuaded, that the propitious 
smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a 
nation that disregards the eternal rules of order 
and right, which Heaven itself has ordained; 
and since the preservation of the sacred fire of 
liberty and the destiny of the republican model 
of government are justly considered as deeply, 
perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment 
entrusted to the hands of the American people. 
Besides the ordinary objects submitted to 
your care, it will remain with your judgment to 
decide, how far an exercise of the occasional 
power delegated by the fifth article of the 
Constitution is rendered expedient at the 
present juncture by the nature of objections 
which have been urged against the system, or 
by the degree of inquietude which has given 
birth to them. Instead of undertaking particu- 
lar recommendations on this subject, in which 
I could be guided by no lights derived from 
official opportunities, I shall again give way to 
my entire confidence in your discernment and 
pursuit of the public good ; for I assure myself 
that whilst you carefully avoid every alteration 
which might endanger the benefits of an united 
and effective government, or which ought to 
await the future lessons of experience ; a rev- 



50 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

erence for the characteristic rights of freemen, 
and a regard for the pubHc harmony, will suf- 
ficiently influence your deliberations on the 
question how far the former may be more im- 
pregnably fortified, or the latter be safely and 
advantageously promoted. 

To the preceding observations I have one 
to add, which will be most properly addressed 
to the House of Representatives. It concerns 
myself, and will therefore be as brief as possi- 
ble. When I was first honored with a call into 
the service of my country, then on the eve of 
an arduous struggle for its liberties, the light 
in which I contemplated my duty required that 
I should renounce every pecuniary compensa- 
tion. From this resolution I have in no in- 
stance departed. And being still under the 
impressions which produced it I must decline, 
as inapplicable to myself, any share in the per- 
sonal emoluments, which may be indispensably 
included in a permanent provision for the ex- 
ecutive department ; and must accordingly 
pray that the pecuniary estimates for the 
station in which I am placed, may, during 
my continuance in it, be limited to such actual 
expenditures as the public good may be thought 
to require. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 5 1 

Having thus imparted to you my sentiments, 
as they have been awakened by the, occasion 
which brings us together, I shall 'take my 
present leave ; but not without resorting once 
more to the benign Parent of the human race, 
in humble supplication, that since He has been 
pleased to favor the American people with op- 
portunities for deliberating in perfect tranquil- 
lity, and dispositions for deciding with unparal- 
leled unanimity on a form of government for 
the security of their union, and the advance- 
ment of their happiness; so His divine bless- 
ings may be equally conspicuous in the en- 
larged views, the temperate consultations, and 
the wise measures on which the success of this 
government must depend. 



4 

I 



II. 

CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 



II. 

CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

Constitutional government in the United 
States began, in its national phase, with the 
inauguration of Washington, but the experi- 
ment was for a long time a doubtful one. Of 
the two parties, the federal and the anti-federal 
parties, which had faced one another on the 
question of the adoption of the Constitution, 
the latter had disappeared. Its conspicuous 
failure to achieve the fundamental object of 
its existence, and the evident hopelessnesss of 
reversing its failure in future, blotted it out of 
existence. There was left but one party, the 
federal party ; and it, strong as it appeared, 
was really in almost as precarious a position as 
its former opponent, because of the very com- 
pleteness of its success in achieving its funda- 
mental object. Hamilton and Jefferson, two 
55 



56 CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

of its representative members, were opposed in 
almost all the political instincts of their natures ; 
the former chose the restraints of strong gov- 
ernment as instinctively as the latter clung to 
individualism. They had been accidentally 
united for the time in desiring the adoption of 
the Constitution, though Hamilton considered 
it only a temporary shift for something stronger, 
while Jefferson wished for a bill of rights to 
weaken the force of some of its implications. 
Now that the Constitution was ratified, what tie 
was there to hold these two to any united ac- 
tion for the future ? Nothing but a shadow — 
the name of a party not yet two years old. As 
soon, therefore, as the federal party fairly en- 
tered upon a secure tenure of power, the diver- 
gent instincts of the two classes represented by 
Hamilton and Jefferson began to show them- 
selves more distinctly until there was no longer 
any pretence of party unity, and the democratic 
(or republican) party assumed its place, in 
1792-3, as the recognized opponent of the party 
in power. It would be beside the purpose to 



CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. $7 

attempt to enumerate the points in which the 
natural antagonism of the federalists and 
the republicans came to the surface during the 
decade of contest which ended in the downfall 
of the federal party in iSoo-i. In all of them, 
in the struggles over the establishment of the 
Bank of the United States and the assumption 
of the State debts, in the respective sympathy 
for France and Great Britain, in the strong 
federalist legislation forced through during the 
war feeling against France in 1798, the con- 
trolling sympathy of the republicans for in- 
dividualism and of the federalists for a strong 
national government is constantly visible, if 
looked for. The difficulty is that these per- 
manent features are often so obscured by the 
temporary media in which they appear that the 
republicans are likely to be taken as a merely 
State-rights party, and the federalists as a mere- 
ly commercial party. 

To adopt either of these notions would be to 
take a very erroneous idea of American politi- 
cal history. The whole policy of the republi- 



58 CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

cans was to forward the freedom of the 
individual ; their leader seems to have made 
all other points subordinate to this. There is 
hardly any point in which the action of the in- 
dividual American has been freed from govern- 
mental restraints, from ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, from sumptuary laws, from restrictions 
on suffrage, from restrictions on commerce, pro- 
duction, and exchange, for which he is not 
indebted in some measure to the work and 
teaching of Jefferson between the years of 
1790 and 1800. He and his party found the 
States in existence, understood well that they 
were convenient shields for the individual 
against the possible powers of the new federal 
government for evil, and made use of them. 
The State sovereignty of Jefferson was the 
product of individualism ; that of Calhoun was 
the product of sectionalism. 

On the other hand, if Jeffersonian democracy 
was the representative of all the individualistic 
tendencies of the later science of political econ- 
omy, Hamiltonian federalism represented the 



CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 59 

necessary corrective force of law. It was in 
many respects a strong survival of colonialism. 
Together with some of the evil features of 
colonialism, its imperative demands for sub- 
mission to class government, its respect for the 
interests and desires of the few, and its con- 
tempt for those of the many, it had brought 
into American constitutional life a very high 
ratio of that respect for law which alone can 
render the happiness and usefulness of the in- 
dividual a permanent and secure possession. It 
was impossible for federalism to resist the in- 
dividualistic tendency of the country for any 
length of time ; it is the monument of the 
party that it secured, before it fell, abiding 
guaranties for the security of the individual 
under freedom. 

The genius of the federalists was largely 
practical. It was shown in their masterly or- 
ganization of the federal government when it 
was first entrusted to their hands, an organiza- 
tion which has since been rather developed than 
disturbed in any of its parts. But the details 



60 CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

of the work absorbed the attention of the 
leaders so completely that it would be impos- 
sible to fix on any public address as entirely 
representative of the party. Fisher Ames' 
speech on the Jay treaty, which was considered 
by the federalists the most effective piece of 
oratory in their party history, has been taken 
as a substitute. The question was to the 
federalists partly of commercial and partly of 
national importance. John Jay had secured 
the first commercial treaty with Great Britain 
in 1795. It not only provided for the security 
of American commerce during the European 
wars to which Great Britain was a party, and 
obtained the surrender of the military posts in 
the present States of Ohio and Michigan ; it 
also gave the United States a standing in the 
family of nations which it was dif^cult to claim 
elsewhere while Great Britain continued to re- 
fuse to treat on terms of equality. The 
Senate therefore ratified the treaty, and it was 
constitutionally complete. The democratic 
majority in the House of Representatives, ob- 



CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 6 1 

jecting to the treaty as a surrender of pre- 
vious engagements with France, and as a fail- 
ure to secure the rights of individuals against 
Great Britain, particularly in the matter of im- 
pressment, raised the point that the House was 
not bound to vote money for carrying into 
effect a treaty with which it was seriously dis- 
satisfied. The reply of Ames is a forcible 
presentation of both the national and the com- 
mercial aspects of his party ; it had a very great 
influence in securing, though by a very narrow 
majority, the vote of the House in favor of the 
appropriation. 

There is an equally great difficulty in fixing 
on any completely representative oration from 
the republican point of view, and the difficulty 
is aggravated by the lack of great orators among 
the republicans. The selection of Nicholas' 
argument for the repeal of the sedition law 
has been made for several reasons. It shows 
the instinctive sympathy of the party for the 
individual rather than for the government. It 
shows the force with which this sympathy drove 



62 CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

the party into a strict construction of the Con- 
stitution. It seems also to bear the strongest 
internal indications that it was inspired, if not 
entirely written, by the great leader of the 
party, Jefferson. The federalists had used the 
popular war feeling against France in 1798, not 
only to press the formation of an army and a 
navy and the abrogation of the old and trouble- 
some treaties with France, but to pass the alien 
and sedition laws as well. The former em- 
powered the President to expel from the coun- 
try or imprison any alien whom he should con- 
sider dangerous to the peace and safety of the 
United States. The latter forbade, under 
penalty of fine and imprisonment, the printing 
or publishing of any " false, scandalous, or 
malicious writings " calculated to bring the 
Government, Congress, or the President into 
disrepute, or to excite against them the hatred 
of the good people of the United States, or to 
stir up sedition. It was inevitable that the re- 
publicans should oppose such laws, and that 
the people should support them in their oppo^ 



CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 63 

sition. At the election of 1800, the federal 
party was overthrown, and the lost ground was 
never regained. With Jefferson's election to 
the presidency, began the democratic period 
of the United States ; but it has always been 
colored strongly and naturally by the federal 
bias toward law and order. 



FISHER AMES, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(born 1758, DIED 1808.) 



ON THE BRITISH TREATY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTA- 
TIVES, APRIL 28, 1796. 

It would be strange, that a subject, which 
has aroused in turn all the passions of the coun- 
try, should be discussed without the interfer- 
ence of any of our own. We are men, and 
therefore not exempt from those passions ; as 
citizens and representatives, we feel the inter- 
ests that must excite them. The hazard of 
great interests cannot fail to agitate strong pas- 
sions. We are not disinterested ; it is impossi- 
ble we should be dispassionate. The warmth 
of such feelings may becloud the judgment, 
and, for a time, pervert the understanding. 
But the public sensibility, and our own, has 
sharpened the spirit of inquiry, and given an 
animation to the debate. The public attention 
has been quickened to mark the progress of the 
64 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 65 

discussion, and its judgment, often hasty and 
erroneous on first impressions, has become 
solid and enlightened at last. Our result will, 
I hope, on that account, be safer and more 
mature, as well as more accordant with that of 
the nation. The only constant agents in 
political affairs are the passions of men. Shall 
we complain of our nature — shall we say that 
man ought to have been made otherwise ? It 
is right already, because He, from whom we 
derive our nature, ordained it so ; and because 
thus made and thus acting, the cause of 
truth and the public good is more surely pro- 
moted. * * * 

The treaty is bad, fatally bad, is the cry. It 
sacrifices the interest, the honor, the indepen- 
dence of the United States, and the faith of our 
engagements to France. If we listen to the 
clamor of party intemperance, the evils are of a 
number not to be counted, and of a nature not 
to be borne, even in idea. The language of 
passion and exaggeration may silence that of 
sober reason in other places, it has not done it 
here. The question here is, whether the treaty 
be really so very fatal as to oblige the nation 
to break its faith. I admit that such a treaty 
ought not to be executed. I admit that self- 



66 FISHER AMES. 

preservation is the first law of society, as well as 
of individuals. It would, perhaps, be deemed 
an abuse of terms to call that a treaty, which 
violates such a principle. I waive also, for the 
present, any inquiry, what departments shall 
represent the nation, and annul the stipulations 
of a treaty. I content myself with pursuing 
the inquiry, whether the nature of this com- 
pact be such as to justify our refusal to carry it 
into effect. A treaty is the promise of a nation. 
Now, promises do not always bind him that 
makes them. But I lay down two rules, which 
ought to guide us in this case. The treaty 
must appear to be bad, not merely in the petty 
details, but in its character, principle, and mass. 
And in the next place, this ought to be ascer- 
tained by the decided and general concurrence 
of the enlightened public. 

I confess there seems to be something very 
like ridicule thrown over the debate by the dis- 
cussion of the articles in detail. The unde- 
cided point is, shall we break our faith ? And 
while our country and enlightened Europe, 
await the issue with more than curiosity, we 
are employed to gather piecemeal, and article 
by article, from the instrument, a justification 
for the deed by trivial calculations of commer- 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 67 

cial profit and loss. This is little worthy of the 
subject, of this body, or of the nation. If the 
treaty is bad, it will appear to be so in its mass. 
Evil to a fatal extreme, if that be its tendency, 
requires no proof ; it brings it. Extremes 
speak for themselves and make their own law. 
What if the direct voyage of American ships 
to Jamaica with horses or lumber, might net 
one or two per centum more than the present 
trade to Surinam ; would the proof of the fact 
avail any thing in so grave a question as the 
violation of the public engagements ? * * * 
Why do they complain, that the West Indies 
are not laid open ? Why do they lament, that 
any restriction is stipulated on the commerce 
of the East Indies? Why do they pretend, 
that if they reject this, and insist upon more, 
more will be accomplished ? Let us be explicit 
— more would not satisfy. If all was granted, 
would not a treaty of amity with Great Britain 
still be obnoxious? Have we not this instant 
heard it urged against our envoy, that he was 
not ardent enough in his hatred of Great 
Britain ? A treaty of amity is condemned be- 
cause it was not made by a foe, and in the 
spirit of one. The same gentleman, at the 
same instant, repeats a very prevailing objec- 



68 FISHER AMES. 

tion, that no treaty should be made with the 
enemy of France. No treaty, exclaim others, 
should be made with a monarch or a despot ; 
there will be no naval security while those sea- 
robbers domineer on the ocean ; their den must 
be destroyed ; that nation must be extirpated. 

I like this, sir, because it is sincerity. With 
feelings such as these, we do not pant for 
treaties. Such passions seek nothing, and will 
be content with nothing, but the destruction of 
their object. If a treaty left King George his 
island, it would not answer; not if he stipulated 
to pay rent for it. It has been said, the world 
ought to rejoice if Britain was sunk in the sea ; if 
where there are now men and wealth and laws 
and liberty, there was no more than a sand bank 
for sea monsters to fatten on ; a space for the 
storms of the ocean to mingle in conflict. * * * 

What is patriotism ? Is it a narrow affection 
for the spot where a man was born ? Are the 
very clods where we tread entitled to this 
ardent preference because they are ' greener ? 
No, sir, this is not the character of the virtue, 
and it soars higher for its object. It is an 
extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoy- 
ments of life, and twisting itself with the minu- 
test filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 69 

the laws of society, because they are the laws 
of virtue. In their authority we see, not the 
array of force and terror, but the venerable 
image of our country's honor. Every good 
citizen makes that honor his own, and cherishes 
it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is 
willing to risk his life in its defence, and is con- 
scious that he gains protection while he gives 
it. For, what rights of a citizen will be deemed 
inviolable when a state renounces the principles 
that constitute their security? Or if his life 
should not be invaded, what would its enjoy- 
ments be in a country odious in the eyes of 
strangers and dishonored in his own ? Could 
he look with affection and veneration to such 
a country as his parent ? The sense of having 
one would die within him ; he would blush for 
his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, 
for it would be a vice. He would be a banished 
man in his native land. I see no exception to 
the respect that is paid among nations to the 
law of good faith. If there are cases in this 
enlightened period when it is violated, there 
are none when it is decried. It is the philoso- 
phy of politics, the religion of governments. 
It is observed by barbarians — a whiff of tobacco 
smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely 



yo FISHER AMES. 

binding force but sanctity to treaties. Even 
in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money, 
but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise, or 
too just, to disown and annul its obligation. 
Thus we see, neither the ignorance of savages, 
nor the principles of an association for piracy 
and rapine, permit a nation to despise its 
engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrec- 
tion from the foot of the gallows, if the victims 
of justice could live again, collect together and 
form a society, they would, however loath, 
soon find themselves obliged to make justice, 
that justice under which they fell, the funda- 
mental law of their state. They would per- 
ceive, it was their interest to make others 
respect, and they would therefore soon pay 
some respect themselves, to the obligations of 
good faith. 

It is painful, I hope it is superfluous, to make 
even the supposition, that America should fur- 
nish the occasion of this opprobrium. No, let 
me not even imagine, that a republican govern- 
ment, sprung, as our own is, from a people 
enlightened and uncorrupted, a government 
whose origin is right, and whose daily discipline 
is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make its 
option to be faithless — can dare to act what 



THE BRITISH TREATY. J\ 

despots dare not avow, what our own example 
evinces, the states of Barbary are unsuspected 
of. No, let me rather make the supposition, 
that Great Britain refuses to execute the treaty, 
after we have done every thing to carry it into 
effect. Is there any language of reproach pun- 
gent enough to express your commentary on 
the fact ? What would you say, or rather what 
would you not say ? Would you not tell them, 
wherever an Englishman might travel, shame 
would stick to him — he would disown his coun- 
try. You would exclaim, England, proud of 
your wealth, and arrogant in the possession of 
power — blush for these distinctions, which be- 
come the vehicles of your dishonor. Such a 
nation might truly say to corruption, thou art 
my father, and to the worm, thou art my 
mother and my sister. We should say of such a 
race of men, their name is a heavier burden 
than their debt. * * * 

The refusal of the posts (inevitable if we 
reject the treaty) is a measure too decisive in 
its nature to be neutral in its consequences. 
From great causes we are to look for great 
effects. A plain and obvious one will be, the 
price of the Western lands will fall. Settlers 
will not choose to fix their habitation on a field 



72 FISHER AMES. 

of battle. Those who talk so much of the 
interest of the United States, should calculate 
how deeply it will be affected by rejecting the 
treaty ; how vast a tract of wild land will 
almost cease to be property. This loss, let it 
be observed, will fall upon a fund expressly 
devoted to sink the national debt. What then 
are we called upon to do? However the form 
of the vote and the protestations of many may 
disguise the proceeding, our resolution is in 
substance, and it deserves to wear the title of a 
resolution to prevent the sale of the Western 
lands and the discharge of the public debt. 

Will the tendency to Indian hostilities be 
contested by any one ? Experience gives the 
answer. The frontiers were scourged with war 
till the negotiation with Great Britain was far 
advanced, and then the state of hostility ceased. 
Perhaps the public agents of both nations are 
innocent of fomenting the Indian war, and per- 
haps they are not. We ought not, however, to 
expect that neighboring nations, highly irritated 
against each other, will neglect the friendship 
of the savages ; the traders will gain an influence 
and will abuse it ; and who is ignorant that their 
passions are easily raised, and hardly restrained 
from violence ? Their situation will oblige them 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 73 

to choose between this country and Great 
Britain, in case the treaty should be rejected. 
They will not be our friends, and at the same 
time the friends of our enemies. 

But am I reduced to the necesity of proving 
this point ? Certainly the very men who charged 
the Indian war on the detention of the posts, 
will call for no other proof than the recital of 
their own speeches. It is remembered with 
what emphasis, with what acrimony, they ex- 
patiated on the burden of taxes, and the drain 
of blood and treasure into the Western country, 
in consequence of Britain's holding the posts. 
Until the posts are restored, they exclaimed, 
the treasury and the frontiers must bleed. 

If any, against all these proofs, should main- 
tain that the peace with the Indians will be 
stable without the posts, to them I urge another 
reply. From arguments calculated to produce 
conviction, I will appeal directly to the hearts 
of those who hear me, and ask, whether it is not 
already planted there ? I resort especially to 
the convictions of the Western gentlemen, 
whether supposing no posts and no treaty, the 
settlers will rem.ain in security ? Can they take 
it upon them to say, that an Indian peace, under 
these circumstances, will prove firm ? No, sir, 



74 FISHER AMES. 

it will not be peace, but a sword ; it will be no 
better than a lure to draw victims within the 
reach of the tomahawk. 

On this theme my emotions are unutterable. 
If I could find words for them, if my powers 
bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell 
my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it 
should reach every log-house beyond the moun- 
tains. I would say to the inhabitants, wake 
from your false security ; your cruel dangers, 
your more cruel apprehensions are soon to be 
renewed ; the wounds, yet unhealed, are to be 
torn open again ; in the daytime, your path 
through the woods will be ambushed ; the dark- 
ness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of 
your dwellings. You are a father — the blood 
of your sons shall fatten your cornfield ; you are 
a mother — the war-whoop shall wake the sleep 
of the cradle. 

On this subject you need not suspect any 
deception on your feelings. It is a spectacle of 
horror, which cannot be overdrawn. If you 
have nature in your hearts, it will speak a 
language, compared with which all I have said 
or can say will be poor and frigid. 

Will it be whispered that the treaty has 
made me a new champion for the protection of 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 75 

the frontiers ? It is known that my voice as 
well as vote have been uniformly given in con- 
formity with the ideas I have expressed. Pro- 
tection is the right of the frontiers ; it is our 
duty to give it. 

Who will accuse me of wandering out of the 
subject ? Who will say that I exaggerate the 
tendencies of our measures? Will any one 
answer by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? 
Will any one deny, that we are bound, and I 
would hope to good purpose, by the most 
solemn sanctions of duty for the vote we give? 
Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeel- 
ing indifference to the tears and blood of their 
subjects ? Have the principles on which you 
ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings 
no practical influence, no binding force ? Are 
they merely themes of idle declamation intro- 
duced to decorate the morality of a newspaper 
essay, or to furnish petty topics of harangue 
from the windows of that state-house ? I trust 
it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to 
ask. Can you put the dearest interest of society 
at risk without guilt and without remorse. 

It is vain to offer as an excuse, that public 
men are not to be reproached for the evils 
that may happen to ensue from their measures. 



76 FISHER AMES. 

This is very true where they are unforeseen or 
inevitable. Those I have depicted are not un- 
foreseen ; they are so far from inevitable, we are 
going to bring them into being by our vote. 
We choose the consequences, and become as 
justly answerable for them as for the measures 
that we know will produce them. 

By rejecting the posts we light the savage 
fires — we bind the victims. This day we un- 
dertake to render account to the widows and 
orphans whom our decision will make, to the 
wretches that will be roasted at the stake, to 
our country, and I do not deem it too serious 
to say, to conscience and to God. We are an- 
swerable, and if duty be any thing more than a 
word of imposture, if conscience be not a bug- 
bear, we are preparing to make ourselves as 
wretched as our country. 

There is no mistake in this case — there can 
be none. Experience has already been the 
prophet of events, and the cries of future vic- 
tims have already reached us. The Western in- 
habitants are not a silent and uncomplaining 
sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from 
the shade of their wilderness. It exclaims that, 
while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, 
the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 7/ 

our imagination to the scenes that will open. 
It is no great effort of the imagination to con- 
ceive that events so near are already begun. I 
can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage 
vengeance, and the shrieks of torture. Already 
they seem to sigh in the west wind — already 
they mingle with every echo from the moun- 
tains. 

It is not the part of prudence to be inatten- 
tive to the tendencies of measures. Where 
there is any ground to fear that these will prove 
pernicious, wisdom and duty forbid that we 
should underrate them. If we reject the treaty, 
will our peace be as safe as if we executed it 
with good faith ? I do honor to the intrepid 
spirits of those who say it will. It was formerly 
understood to constitute the excellence of a 
man's faith to believe without evidence and 
against it. 

But, as opinions on this article are changed, 
and we are called to act for our country, it be- 
comes us to explore the dangers that will attend 
its peace, and to avoid them if we can. * * * 

Is there any thing in the prospect of the in- 
terior state of the country to encourage us to 
aggravate the dangers of a war ? Would not 
the shock of that evil produce another, and 



78 FISHER AMES. 

shake down the feeble and then unbraced 
structure of our government ? Is this a 
chimera ? Is it going off the ground of matter 
of fact to say, the rejection of the appropria- 
tion proceeds upon the doctrine of a civil war 
of the departments ? Two branches have rati- 
fied a treaty, and we are going to set it aside. 
How is this disorder in the machine to be rec- 
tified ? While it exists its movements must 
stop, and when we talk of a remedy, is that any 
other than the formidable one of a revolution- 
ary one of the people ? And is this, in the 
judgment even of my opposers, to execute, to 
preserve the constitution and the public order? 
Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, 
which they can have the courage to contem- 
plate and to brave, or beyond which their pene- 
tration can reach and see the issue ? They 
seem to believe, and they act as if they be- 
lieved, that our union, our peace, our liberty, 
are invulnerable and immortal — as if our happy 
state was not to be disturbed by our dissen- 
tions, and that we are not capable of falling 
from it by our unworthiness. Some of them 
have, no doubt, better nerves and better dis- 
cernment than mine. They can see the bright 
aspects and the happy consequences of all this 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 79 

array of horrors. They can see intestine dis- 
cords, our government disorganized, our wrongs 
aggravated, multiplied, and unredressed, peace 
with dishonor, or war without justice, union, or 
resources, in "the calm lights of mild phil- 
osophy." 

But whatever they may anticipate as the 
next measure of prudence and safety, they have 
explained nothing to the house. After reject- 
ing the treaty, what is to be the next step ? 
They must have foreseen what ought to be 
done ; they have doubtless resolved what to 
propose. Why then are they silent ? Dare 
they not avow their plan of conduct, or do 
they wait till our progress toward confusion 
shall guide them in forming it ? 

Let me cheer the mind, weary, no doubt, and 
ready to despond on this prospect, by present- 
ing another, which it is yet in our power to re- 
alize. Is it possible for a real American to 
look at the prosperity of this country without 
some desire for its continuance — without some 
respect for the measures which, many will say, 
produced, and all will confess, have preserved, 
it ? Will he not feel some dread that a change 
of system will reverse the scene ? The well- 
grounded fears of our citizens in 1794 were re- 



80 FISHER AMES. 

moved by the treaty, but are not forgotten. 
Then they deemed war nearly inevitable, and 
would not this adjustment have been con- 
sidered, at that day, as a happy escape from 
the calamity ? The great interest and the 
general desire of our people, was to enjoy the 
advantages of neutrality. This instrument, 
however misrepresented, affords America that 
inestimable security. The causes of our disputes 
are either cut up by the roots, or referred to a 
new negotiation after the end of the European 
war. This was gaining every thing, because it 
confirmed our neutrality, by which our citizens 
are gaining every thing. This alone would 
justify the engagements of the government. 
For, when the fiery vapors of the war lowered 
in the skirts of our horizon, all our wishes were 
concentred in this one, that we might escape 
the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like 
a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to 
our eyes the .space where it was raging, and 
afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic 
of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors 
will grow pale, — it will be a baleful meteor por- 
tending tempest and war. 

Let us not hesitate, then, to agree to the ap- 
propriation to carry it into faithful execution 



THE BRITISH TREATY. 8 1 

Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, se- 
cure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confi- 
dence and enterprise that will augment its 
prosperity. The progress of wealth and im- 
provement is wonderful, and, some will think, 
too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and 
vast, and if peace and good government should 
be preserved, the acquisitions of our citizens 
are not so pleasing as the proofs of their in- 
dustry — as the instruments of their future suc- 
cess. The rewards of exertion go to augment 
its power. Profit is every hour becoming 
capital. The vast crop of our neutrality is all 
seed-wheat, and is sown again to swell, almost 
beyond calculation, the future harvest of pros- 
perity. And in this progress, what seems to 
be fiction is found to fall short of experience. 

I rose to speak under impressions that I 
would have resisted if I could. Those who see 
me will believe that the reduced state of my 
health has unfitted me, almost equally for 
much exertion of body or mind. Unprepared 
for debate, by careful reflection in my retire- 
ment, or by long attention here, I thought the 
resolution I had taken to sit silent, was im- 
posed by necesity, and would cost me no effort 
to maintain. With a mind thus vacant of ideas, 



82 FISHER AMES. 

and sinking, as I really am, under a sense of 
weakness, I imagined the very desire of speak- 
ing was extinguished by the persuasion that I 
had nothing to say. Yet, when I come to the 
moment of deciding the vote, I start back with 
dread from the edge of the pit into which we 
are plunging. In my view, even the minutes I 
have spent in expostulation have their value, 
because they protract the crisis, and the short 
period in which alone we may resolve to escape 
it. 

I have thus been led, by my feelings, to 
speak more at length than I intended. Yet I 
have, perhaps, as little personal interest in the 
event as any one here. There is, I believe, no 
member who will not think his chance to be 
a witness of the consequences greater than 
mine. If, however, the vote shall pass to re- 
ject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the 
public disorders, to make confusion worse con- 
founded, even I, slender and almost broken as 
my hold upon life is, may outlive the govern- 
ment and constitution of my country. 



JOHN NICHOLAS, 

OF VIRGINIA. 

(born 1763, DIED i8ig.) 



ON THE PROPOSED REPEAL OF THE SEDITION LAW^ 
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEB. 25, 1799. 

Mr. Chairman : 

The Select Committee had very truly stated 
that only the second and third sections of the 
act are complaimed of ; that the part of the 
law which punishes seditious acts is acquiesced 
in, and that the part which goes to restrain 
what are called seditious writings is alone the 
object of the petitions. This part of the law is 
complained of as being unwarranted by the 
Constitution, and destructive of the first prin- 
ciples of republican government. It is always 
justifiable, in examining the principle of a law, 
to inquire what other laws can be passed with 
equal reason, and to impute to it all the mis- 
chiefs for which it may be used as a precedent. 
83 



84 JOHN NICHOLAS. 

In this case, little inquiry is left for us to make, 
the arguments in favor of the law carrying us 
immediately and by inevitable consequence to 
absolute power over the press. 

It is not pretended that the Constitution has 
given any express authority, which they claim, 
for passing this law, and it is claimed only as 
implied in th^t clause of the Constitution which 
says : " Congress shall have power to make all 
laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, 
and all other powers vested by this Constitution 
in the Government of the United States, or in 
any department or of^cer thereof." It is clear 
that this clause was intended to be merely an 
auxiliary to the powers specially enumerated in 
the Constitution ; and it must, therefore, be so 
construed as to aid them, and at the same time 
to leave the boundaries between the General 
Government and the State governments un- 
touched. The argument by which the Select 
Committee have endeavored to establish the 
authority of Congress over the press is the fol- 
lowing : " Congress has power to punish sedi- 
tious combinations to resist the laws, and there- 
fore Congress must have the power to punish 
false, scandalous, and malicious writings ; be- 



THE SEDITION LAW. 85 

cause such writings render the Administration 
odious and contemptible among the people, 
and by doing so have a tendency to produce 
opposition to the laws." To make it support 
the construction of the committee, it should 
say that " Congress shall have power over all 
acts which are likely to produce acts which 
hinder the execution of," etc. Our construction 
confines the power of Congress to such acts as 
immediately interfere with the execution of the 
enumerated powers of Congress, because the 
power can only be necessary as well as proper 
when the acts would really hinder the execu- 
tion. The construction of the committee ex- 
tends the power of Congress to all acts which 
have a relation, ever so many degrees removed, 
to the enumerated powers, or rather to the acts 
which would hinder their execution. By our 
construction, the Constitution remains defined 
and limited, according to the plain intent and 
meaning of its framers ; by the construction of 
the committee, all limitation is lost, and it may 
be extended over the different actions of life as 
speculative politicians may think fit. What 
has a greater tendency to fit men for insurrec- 
tion and resistance to government than disso- 
lute, immoral habits, at once destroying love of 



86 JOHN NICHOLAS. 

order, and dissipating the fortune which gives 
an interest in society ? The doctrine that Con- 
gress can punish any act which has a tendency 
to hinder the execution of the laws, as well as 
acts which do hinder it, will, therefore, clearly 
entitle them to assume a general guardianship 
over the morals of the people of the United 
States. Again, nothing can have a greater 
tendency to ensure obedience to law, and noth- 
ing can be more likely to check every propen- 
sity to resistance to government, than virtuous 
and wise education ; therefore Congress must 
have power to subject all the youth of the 
United States to a certain system of education. 
It would be very easy to connect every sort of 
authority used by any government with the 
well-being of the General Government, and with 
as much reason as the committee had for their 
opinion, to assign the power to Congress, al- 
though the consequence must be the prostra- 
tion of the State governments. 

But enough has been said to show the neces- 
sity of adhering to the common meaning of the 
word " necessary " in the clause under consid- 
eration, which is, that the power to be assumed 
must be one without which some one of the 
enumerated powers cannot exist or be main- 



THE SEDITION LAW. 8/ 

tained. It cannot escape notice, however, that 
the doctrine contended for, that the Adminis- 
tration must be protected against writings 
which are likely to bring it into contempt, as 
tending to opposition, will apply with more 
force to truth than falsehood. It cannot be 
denied that the discovery of maladministration 
will bring more lasting discredit on the govern- 
ment of a country than the same charges would 
if untrue. This is not an alarm founded merely 
on construction, for the governments which 
have exercised control over the press have car- 
ried it the whole length. This is notoriously 
the law of England, whence this system has 
been drawn ; for there truth and falsehood 
are alike subject to punishment, if the publica- 
tion brings contempt on the officers of govern- 
ment. * * * 

The law has been current by the fair pretence 
of punishing nothing but falsehood, and by 
holding out to the accused the liberty of prov- 
ing the truth of the writing; but it was from 
the first apprehended, and it seems now to be 
adjudged (the doctrine has certainly been as- 
serted on this floor), that matters of opinion, 
arising on notorious facts, come under the law. 
If this is the case, where is the advantage of 



SS JOHN NICHOLAS. 

the law requiring that the writing should be 
false before a man shall be liable to punish- 
ment, or of his having the liberty of proving 
the truth of his writing ? Of the truth of facts 
there is an almost certain test ; the belief of 
honest men is certain enough to entitle it to 
great confidence ; but their opinions have no 
certainty at all. The trial of the truth of 
opinions, in the best state of society, would be 
altogether precarious; and perhaps a jury of 
twelve men could never be found to agree in 
any one opinion. At the present moment, 
when, unfortunately, opinion is almost entirely 
governed by prejudice and passion, it may be 
more decided, but nobody will say it is more 
respectable. Chance must determine whether 
political opinions are true or false, and it will 
not unfrequently happen that a man will be 
punished for publishing opinions which are sin- 
cerely his, and which are of a nature to be ex- 
tremely interesting to the public, merely because 
accident pr design has collected a jury of differ- 
ent sentiments. * * * 

Is the power claimed proper for Congress to 
possess ? It is believed not, and this will readily 
be admitted if it can be proved, as I think it 
can, that the persons who administer the gov- 



THE SEDITION LAW. 89 

ernment have an interest in the power to be con- 
fided opposed to that of the community. It 
must be agreed that the nature of our govern- 
ment makes a diffusion of knowledge of public 
affairs necessary and proper, and that the peo- 
ple have no mode of obtaining it but through 
the press. The necessity for their having this 
information results from its being their duty to 
elect all the parts of the Government, and, in 
this way, to sit in judgment over the conduct 
of those who have been heretofore employed. 
The most important and necessary information 
for the people to receive is that of the miscon- 
duct of the Government, because their good 
deeds, although they will produce affection and 
gratitude to public officers, will only confirm 
the existing confidence and will, therefore, 
make no change in the conduct of the people. 
The question, then, whether the Government 
ought to have control over the persons who 
alone can give information throughout a country 
is nothing more than this, whether men, inter- 
ested in suppressing information necessary for 
the people to have, ought to be entrusted with 
the power, or whether they ought to have a 
power which their personal interest leads to the 
abuse of. I am sure no candid man will hesi- 



90 JOHN NICHOLAS. 

tate about the answer ; and it may also safely 
be left with ingenuous men to say whether the 
misconduct which we sometimes see in the 
press had not better be borne with, than to run 
the risk of confiding the power of correction to 
men who will be constantly urged by their own 
feelings to destroy its usefulness. * * * How 
long can it be desirable to have periodical elec- 
tions for the purpose of judging of the conduct 
of our rulers, when the channels of information 
may be choked at their will? 

But, sir, I have ever believed this question as 
settled by an amendment to the Constitution, 
proposed with others for declaring and restrict- 
ing its powers, as the preamble declares, at the 
request of several of the States, made at the 
adoption of the Constitution, in order to pre- 
vent their misconstruction and abuse. This 
amendment is in the following words : " Con- 
gress shall make no law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exer- 
cise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech 
or of the press, or the right of the people 
peaceably to assemble and petition the Govern- 
ment for a redress of grievances." There can 
be no doubt about the effect of this amend- 
ment, unless the " freedom of the press" means 



THE SEDITION LAW. 9 1 

something very different from what it seems ; 
or unless there was some actual restraint upon 
it, under the Constitution of the United States, 
at the time of the adoption of this amendment, 
commensurate with that imposed by this law. 
Both are asserted, viz., that the " freedom of 
the press " has a defined, limited meaning, and 
that the restraints of the common law were in 
force under the United States, and are greater 
than those of the act of Congress, and that, 
therefore, either way the " freedom of the press " 
is not abridged. 

It is asserted by the select committee, and 
by everybody who has gone before them in 
this discussion, that the " freedom of the press," 
according to the universally received accepta- 
tion of the expression, means only an exemp- 
tion from all previous restraints on publication, 
but not an exemption from any punishment 
Government pleases to inflict for what is pub- 
lished. This definition does not at all distin- 
guish between publications of different sorts, 
but leaves all to the regulation of the law, only 
forbidding Government to interfere until the 
publication is really made. The definition, if 
true, so reduces the effect of the amendment 
that the power of Congress is left unlimited 



92 JOHN NICHOLAS. 

over the productions of the press, and they are 
merely deprived of one mode of restraint. 

The amendment was certainly intended to 
produce some limitation to legislative discretion, 
and it must be construed so as to produce such 
an effect, if it is possible. * * * To give it 
such a construction as will bring it to a mere 
nullity would violate the strongest injunctions 
of common-sense and decorum, and yet that 
appears to me to be the effect of the construc- 
tion adopted by the committee. * * * The 
effect of the amendment, say the committee, 
is to prevent Government taking the press from 
its owner ; but how is their power lessened by 
this, when they may take the printer from his 
press and imprison him for any length of time, 
for publishing what they choose to prohibit, 
although it may be ever so proper for public in- 
formation ? The result is that Government may 
forbid any species of writing, true as well as 
false, to be published ; may inflict the heaviest 
punishments they can devise for disobedience, 
and yet we are very gravely assured that this is 
the " freedom of the press." * * * 

A distinction is very frequently relied on 
between the freedom and the licentiousness of 
the press, which it is proper to examine. This 



THE SEDITION- LA W. 93 

seems to me to refute every other argument 
which is used on this subject ; it amounts to an 
admission that there are some acts of the press 
which Congress ought not to have power to re- 
strain, and that by the amendment they are pro- 
hibited to restrain these acts. Now, to justify 
any act of Congress, they ought to show the 
boundary between what is prohibited and what 
is permitted, and that the act is not within the 
prohibited class. The Constitution has fixed no 
such boundary, therefore they can pretend to 
no power over the press, without claiming the 
right of defining what is freedom and what is 
licentiousness, and that would be to claim a 
right which would defeat the Constitution ; for 
every Congress would have the same right, and 
the freedom of the press would fluctuate ac- 
cording to the will of the legislature. This is, 
therefore, only a new mode of claiming absolute 
power over the press. 

It is said there is a common law which makes 
part of the law of the United States, which re- 
strained the press more than the act of Con- 
gress has done, and that therefore there is no 
abridgment of its freedom. What this com- 
mon law is I cannot conceive, nor have I seen 
anybody who could explain himself when he 



94 yOHN NICHOLAS. 

was talking of it. It certainly is not a com- 
mon law of the United States, acquired, as that 
of England was, by immemorial usage. The 
standing of the Government makes this impos- 
sible. It cannot be a code of laws adopted 
because they were universally in use in the 
States, for the States had no uniform code; and, 
if they had, it could hardly become, by implica- 
tion, part of the code of a Government of lim- 
ited powers, from which every thing is ex- 
pressly retained which is not given. Is it the 
law of England, at any particular period, which 
is adopted ? But the nature of the law of En- 
gland makes it impossible that it should have 
been adopted in the lump into such a Govern- 
ment as this is, because it was a complete sys- 
tem for the management of all the affairs of 
a country. It regulated estates, punished all 
crimes, and, in short, went to all things for 
which laws were necessary. But how was 
this law adopted ? Was it by the Constitution ? 
If so, it is immutable and incapable of amend- 
ment. In what part of the Constitution is it 
declared to be adopted ? Was it adopted by 
the courts ? From whom do they derive their 
authority? The Constitution, in the clause first 
cited, relies on Congress to pass all laws neces- 



THE SEDITION LAW. 95 

sary to enable the courts to carry their powers 
into execution ; it cannot, therefore, have been 
intended to give them a power not necessary to 
their declared powers. There does not seem to 
me the smallest pretext for so monstrous an as- 
sumption ; on the contrary, while the Constitu- 
tion is silent about it, every fair inference is 
against it. 

Upon the whole, therefore, I am fully satis- 
fied that no power is given by the Constitution 
to control the press, and that such laws are ex- 
pressly prohibited by the amendment. I think it 
inconsistent with the nature of our Government 
that its administration should have power to re- 
strain animadversions on public measures, and 
for protection from private injury from defa- 
mation the States are fully competent. It is to 
them that our ofificers miust look for protection 
of persons, estates, and every other personal 
right ; and, therefore, I see no reason why it is 
not proper to rely upon it for defence against 
private libels* 



III. 

THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 



III. 

THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 

The inaugural address of President Jefferson 
has been given the first place under this period, 
notwithstanding the fact that it was not at all an 
oration. The inaugural addresses of presidents 
Washington and Adams were really orations, 
although written, depending for much oi their 
effect on the personal presence of him wiio de- 
livered the address ; that of Jefferson was 
altogether a business document, sent to be read 
by the two houses of Congress for their infor- 
mation, and without any of the adjuncts of the 
orator. 

It is impossible, nevertheless, to spare the in- 
augural address of the first Democratic Presi- 
dent, for it is pervaded by a personality which, 
if quieter in its operation, was more potent in 
results than the most burning eloquence could 



100 THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 

have been. The spirit of modern democracy, 
which has become, for good or evil, the common 
characteristic of all American parties and lead- 
ers, was here first put into living words. Tri- 
umphant in national politics, this spirit now 
had but one field of struggle, the politics of the 
States, and here its efforts were for years bent 
to the abolition of every remnant of limitation 
on individual liberty. Outside of New Eng- 
land, the change was accomplished as rapidly 
as the forms of law could be put into the neces- 
sary direction ; remnants of ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment, ecclesiastical taxes of even the mildest 
description, restrictions on manhood suffrage, 
State electoral systems, were the immediate 
victims of the new spirit, and the first term of 
Mr. Jefferson saw most of the States under 
democratic governments. Inside of New Eng- 
land, the change was stubbornly resisted, and, 
for a time, with success. For about twenty 
years, the general rule was that New England 
and Delaware were federalist, and the rest of 
the country was democratic. But even in New 



THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 10 1 

England, a strong democratic minority was 
growing up, and about 1820 the last barriers of 
federalism gave way ; Connecticut, the federal- 
ist " land of steady habits," accepted a new and 
democratic constitution ; Massachusetts modi- 
fied hers ; and the new and reliably democratic 
State of Maine was brought into existence. 
The " era of good feeling " signalized the ex- 
tinction of the federal party and the universal 
reign of democracy. The length of this period 
of contest is the strongest testimony to the 
stubbornness of the New England fibre. Esti- 
mated by States, the success of democracy was 
about as complete in 1803 as in 181 7; but it 
required fifteen years of persistent struggle to 
convince the smallest section of the Union that 
it was hopelessly defeated. 

The whole period was a succession of great 
events. The acquisition of Louisiana, stretch- 
ing from the Mississippi to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, laid, in 1803, the foundations of that im- 
perial domain which the steamboat and railroad 
were to convert to use in after-years. The con- 



I02 THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 

tinental empire of Napoleon and the island em- 
pire of Great Britain drifted into a struggle for 
life or death which hai'dly knew a breathing 
space until the last charge at Waterloo, and 
from the beginning it was conducted by both 
combatants with a reckless disregard of inter- 
national public opinion and neutral rights which 
is hardly credible but for the official records. 
Every injury inflicted on neutral commerce by 
one belligerent was promptly imitated or ex- 
ceeded by the other, and the two were per- 
fectly in accord in insisting on the convenient 
doctrine of international law, that, unless neu- 
tral rights were enforced by the neutral against 
one belligerent, the injury became open to the 
imitation of the other. In the process of imita- 
tion, each belligerent took care to pass at least 
a little beyond the precedent ; and thus, begin- 
ning with a paper blockade of the northern 
coast of the continent by the British Govern- 
ment, the process advanced, by alternate " re- 
taliations," to a British proclamation specifying 
the ports of the world to which American ves- 



THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. I03 

sels were to be allowed to trade, stopping in 
England or its dependencies to pay taxes en 
route. These two almost contemporary events, 
the acquisition of Louisiana^ and the insolent 
pretensions of the European belligerents, were 
the central points of two distinct influences 
which bore strongly on the development of the 
United States, 

The dominant party, the republicans, had 
a horror of a national debt which almost 
amounted to a mania. The associations of the 
term, derived from their reading of English 
history, all pointed to a condition of affairs in 
which the rise of a strong aristocracy was inevi- 
table ; and, to avoid the latter, they were, de- 
termined to pay off the former. The payment 
for Louisiana precluded, in their opinion, the 
support of a respectable navy ; and the rem- 
nants of colonialism in their party predisposed 
them to adopt an ostrich policy instead. The 
Embargo act was passed in 1807, forbidding all 
foreign commerce. The evident failure of this 
act to influence the belligerents brought about 



104 THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY, 

its repeal in 1809, and the substitution^ of the 
Non-intercourse act. This prohibited commer- 
cial intercourse with England and France until 
either should revoke its injurious edicts. Na- 
poleon, by an empty and spurious revocation 
in 1 8 10, induced Congress to withdraw the act 
in respect to France, keeping it alive in respect 
to England. England refused to admit the sin- 
cerity of the French revocation, to withdraw 
her Orders in Council, or to cease impressing 
American seamen. The choice left to the 
United States was between war and submis- 
sion 

The federalist leaders saw that, while their 
party strength was confined to a continually de- 
creasing territory, the opposing democracy not 
only had gained the mass of the original United 
States, but was swarming toward and beyond 
the Mississippi. They dropped to the level of 
a mere party of opposition ; they went further 
until the only article of their political creed 
was State sovereignty ; some of them went one 
step further, and dabbled in hopeless projects 



THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. I05 

for secession and the formation of a New Eng- 
land republic of five States. It is difficult to 
perceive any advantage to public affairs in the 
closing years of the federal party, except that, 
by impelling the democratic leaders to really 
national acts and sympathies, it unwittingly 
aided in the development of nationality from 
democracy. 

If the essential characteristic of colonialism 
is the sense of dependence and the desire to 
imitate, democracy, at least in its earlier phases, 
begets the opposite qualities. The Congres- 
sional elections of 1810-11 showed that the peo- 
ple had gone further in democracy than their 
leaders. " Submission men " were generally 
defeated in the election ; new leaders, like Clay, 
Calhoun, and Crawford, made the dominant 
party a war party, and forced the President into 
their policy ; and the war of 18 12 was begun. 
Its early defeats on land, its startling successes 
at sea, its financial straits, the desperation of 
the contest after the fall of Napoleon, and the 
brilliant victory which crowned its close, all 



I06 THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. 

combined to raise the national feeling to the 
highest pitch ; and the federalists, whose stock 
object of denunciation was " Mr. Madison's 
war," though Mr. Madison was about the most 
unwilling participant in it, came out of it under 
the ban of every national sympathy. 

Democracy found its most congenial soil in 
the North, though it never exhibited the full 
sweep of its power until immigration began to 
assume its great proportions after 1830. As an 
example of the manner in which, in a democ- 
racy, eloquence affects public opinion, and pub- 
lic opinion controls individual action, Dr. Nott's 
sermon on the murder of Hamilton by Burr in 
a duel in 1804, has been placed under this 
period. Forcibly written and widely read, it 
made duelling an entirely sporadic disease 
thereafter in the Northern States. No such re- 
sult would have been possible in the South, so 
long as society consisted of a dominant race, 
encamped amid a multitude of slaves, so long 
as " the night bell tolling for fire," if we take 
Randolph's terrible image, excited the instinc- 



THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY. lO/ 

tive fear of negro insurrection ; the military 
virtues of prompt personal daring influenced 
public opinion more strongly than the elo- 
quence of a Demosthenes could have done. 

The speech of Mr. Quincy, in many points 
one of the most eloquent of our political his- 
tory, will show the brightest phase of federal- 
ism at its lowest ebb. One can hardly com- 
pare it with that of Mr. Clay, which follows it, 
without noticing the national character of the 
latter, as contrasted with the lack of nationality 
of the former. It seems, also, that Mr. Clay's 
speech carries, in its internal characteristics, 
sufficient evidence of the natural forces which 
tended to make democracy a national power, 
and not a mere adjunct of State sovereignty, 
wherever the oblique influence of slavery was 
absent. For this reason, it has been taken as a 
convenient introduction to the topic which fol- 
lows, the Rise of Nationality. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON, 

OF VIRGINIA. 

(BORN 1743, DIED 1826.) 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, AS 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 

MARCH 4, 180I. 

Friends and Fellow-Citizens : 

Called upon to undertake the duties of the 
first executive office of our country, I avail 
myself of the presence of that portion of my 
fellow-citizens which is here assembled, to ex- 
press my grateful thanks for the favor with 
which they have been pleased to look toward 
me, to declare a sincere consciousness, that the 
task is above my talents, and that I approach it 
with those anxious and awful presentiments, 
which the greatness of the charge, and the 
weakness of my powers, so justly inspire. A 
rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful 
land, traversing all the seas with the rich pro- 
ductions of their industry, engaged in com- 
108 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. IO9 

merce with nations who feel power and forget 
right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond 
the reach of mortal eye ; when I contemplate 
these transcendent objects, and see the honor, 
the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved 
country committed to the issue and the aus- 
pices of this day, I shrink from the contempla- 
tion, and humble myself before the magnitude 
of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I 
despair, did not the presence of many, whom I 
see here, remind me, that, in the other high au- 
thorities provided by our Constitution, I shall 
find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal, 
on which to rely under all dif^culties. To you, 
then, gentlemen, who are charged with the 
sovereign functions of legislation, and to those 
associated with you, I look with encouragement 
for that guidance and support which may ena- 
ble us to steer with safety the vessel in which 
we are all embarked, amidst the conflicting ele- 
ments of a troubled world. 

During the contest of opinion through which 
we have passed, the animation of discussions 
and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect 
which might impose on strangers unused to 
think freely, and to speak and to write what 
they think ; but this being now decided by the 



no THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

voice of the nation, announced according to 
the rules of the Constitution, all will of course 
arrange themselves under the will Tof the law, 
and unite in common efforts for the common 
good. All too will bear in mind this sacred 
principle, that though the will of the majority 
is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be right- 
ful, must be reasonable ; that the minority pos- 
sess their equal rights, which equal laws must 
protect, and to violate which would be op- 
pression. Let us then, fellow-citizens, unite 
with one heart and one mind, let us restore to 
social intercourse that harmony and affection 
without which liberty and even life itself are 
but dreary things. And let us reflect, that hav- 
ing banished from our land that religious intol- 
erance under which mankind so long bled and 
suffered, we have yet gained little, if we coun- 
tenance a political intolerance, as despotic, as 
wicked, and as capable of as bitter and bloody 
persecutions. During the throes and convul- 
sions of the ancient world, during the agoniz- 
ing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through 
blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was 
not wonderful that the agitation of the billows 
should reach even this distant and peaceful 
shore ; that this should be more felt and feared 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Ill 

by some, and less by others, and should divide 
opinions as to measures of safety ; but every 
difference of opinion is not a difference of prin- 
ciple. We have called by different names 
brethren of the same principle. We are all Re- 
publicans ; we are all Federalists. If there be 
any among us who wish to dissolve this Union, 
or to change its republican form, let them stand 
undisturbed as monuments of the safety with 
which error of opinion may be tolerated, where 
reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, 
that some honest men fear that a republican 
government cannot be strong ; that this govern- 
ment is not strong enough. But would the 
honest patriot, in the full tide of successful ex- 
periment, abandon a government which has so 
far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and 
visionary fear, that this government, the world's 
best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to 
preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on 
the contrary, the strongest government on 
earth. I believe it the only one where every 
man, at the call of the law, would fly to the 
standard of the law, and would meet invasions 
of the public order as his own personal con- 
cern. Sometimes it is said, that man cannot be 
trusted with the government of hiinself. Can 



112 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

he then be trusted with the government of oth- 
ers? Or, have we found angels in the form of 
kings, to govern him ? Let history answer this 
question. 

Let us then, with courage and confidence, 
pursue our own federal and republican princi- 
ples; our attachment to union and representa- 
tive government. Kindly separated by nature 
and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc 
of one quarter of the globe ; too high-minded 
to endure the degradation of the others, pos- 
sessing a chosen country, with room enough 
for our descendants to the thousandth and 
thousandth generation, entertaining a due 
sense of our equal right to the use of our own 
faculties, to the acquisition of our own indus- 
try, to honor and confidence from our fellow- 
citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our 
actions and their sense of them, enlightened by 
a benign religion, professed indeed and practised 
in various forms, yet all of them inculcating hon- 
esty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love 
of man, acknowledging and adoring an overrul- 
ing Providence, which, by all its dispensations, 
proves that it delights in the happiness of man 
here, and his greater happiness hereafter ; with 
all these blessings, what more is necessary to 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. II3 

make us a happy and prosperous people ? Still 
one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and fru- 
gal government, which shall restrain men from 
injuring one another, shall leave them other- 
wise free to regulate their own pursuits of in- 
diistry and improvement, and shall not take 
from the mouth of labor the bread it has 
earned. This is the sum of good government ; 
and this is necessary to close the circle of our 
felicities. 

About to enter, fellow-citizens, upon the ex- 
ercise of duties which comprehend every thing 
dear and valuable to you, it is proper you 
should understand what I deem the essential 
principles of our government, and conse- 
quently, those which ought to shape its ad- 
ministration. I will compress them within the 
narrowest compass they will bear, stating the 
general principle, but not all its limitations. 
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever 
state or persuasion, religious or political ; 
peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all 
nations, entangling alliances with none; the sup- 
port of the State governments in all their rights, 
as the most competent administrations for our 
domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks 
against anti-republican tendencies ; the preser- 



114 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

vation of the general government in its whole 
constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our 
peace at home and safety abroad ; a jealous 
care of the right of election by the people, a 
mild and safe corrective of abuses which are 
lopped by the sword of revolution where peace- 
able remedies are unprovided ; absolute acqui- 
escence in the decisions of the majority, the 
vital principle of republics, from which there is 
no appeal but to force, the vital principle and 
immediate parent of despotism ; a well-disci- 
plined militia, our best reliance in peace, and 
for the first moments of war, till regulars may 
relieve them ; the supremacy of the civil over 
the military authority ; economy in the public 
expense, that labor may be lightly burdened ; 
the honest payment of our debts, and sacred 
preservation of the public faith ; encourage- 
ment of agriculture, and of commerce as its 
handmaid ; the diffusion of information, and 
arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the pub- 
lic reason ; freedom of religion, freedom of the 
press, and freedom of person, under the pro- 
tection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries 
impartially selected. These principles form the 
bright constellation, which has gone before us, 
and guided our steps through an age of revolu- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. II5 

tion and reformation. The wisdom of our 
sages, and blood of our heroes, have been de- 
voted to their attainment ; they should be the 
creed of our political faith, the text of civic in- 
struction, the touchstone by which to try the 
services of those we trust ; and should we wan- 
der from them in moments of error or of alarm, 
let us hasten to retrace our steps, and to regain 
the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and 
safety. 

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you 
have assigned me. With experience enough in 
subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties 
of this, the greatest of all, I have learned to 
expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of im- 
perfect man, to retire from this station with 
the reputation and the favor which bring him 
into it. Without pretensions to that high con- 
fidence you reposed in our first and greatest 
revolutionary character, whose pre-eminent ser- 
vices had entitled him to the first place in his 
country's love, and destined for him the fairest 
page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so 
much confidence only as may give firmness 
and effect to the legal administration of your 
affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect 
of judgment. When right, I shall often be 



Il6 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

thought wrong by those whose positions will 
not command a view of the whole ground. I 
ask your indulgence for my own errors, which 
will never be intentional ; and your support 
against the errors of others, who may condemn 
what they would not, if seen in all its parts. The 
approbation implied by your suffrage, is a great 
consolation to me for the past ; and my future 
solicitude will be, to retain the good opinion of 
those who have bestowed it in advance, to con- 
ciliate that of others, by doing them all the 
good in my power, and to be instrumental to 
the happiness and freedom of all. 

Relying then on the patronage of your good- 
will, I advance with obedience to the work, 
ready to retire from it whenever you become 
sensible how much better choices it is in your 
power to make. And may that infinite Power 
which rules the destinies of the universe, lead 
our councils to what is best, and give them a 
favorable issue for your peace and prosperity. 



ELIPHALET NOTT. 

(born 1773, DIED 1866.) 



ON THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, JULY 
9, 1804 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ALBANY, N. Y. 



" How are the mighty fallen." 

I FEEL, my brethren, how incongruous my sub- 
ject is with the place I occupy. It is humihat- 
ing ; it is distressing in a Christian country, and 
in churches consecrated to the reHgion of Jesus, 
to be obhged to attack a crime which outstrips 
barbarism, and would even sink the character of 
a generous savage. But humiliating as it is, it 
is necessary. And must we then, everi for a 
moment, forget the elevation on which grace 
hath placed us, and the light which the gospel 
sheds around us ? Must we place ourselves 
back in the midst of barbarism ; and instead of 
hearers, softened to forgiveness by the love of 
Jesus, filled with noble sentiments toward our 



Il8 ELI PH A LET NOTT. 

enemies, and waiting for occasions, after the 
example of divinity, to do them good ; instead 
of such hearers, must we suppose ourselves 
addressing hearts petrified to goodness, in- 
capable of mercy, and boiling with revenge ? 
Must we, O my God! instead of exhorting 
those who hear us, to go on unto perfection, 
adding to virtue charity, and to charity brother- 
ly kindness ; must we, as if surrounded by an 
auditory just emerging out of darkness, and 
still cruel and ferocious, reason to convince 
them that revenge is improper, and that to com- 
mit deliberate murder is sin ? 

Yes, we must do this. Repeated violations 
of the law, and the sanctuary which the guilty 
find in public sentiment, prove that it is neces- 
sary. 

Withdraw, therefore, for a moment, ye celes- 
tial spirits — ye holy angels accustomed to hover 
round these altars, and listen to those strains of 
grace which, heretofore, have filled this house 
of God. Other subjects occupy us. Withdraw, 
therefore, and leave us ; leave us to exhort 
Christian parents to restrain their vengeance, 
and at least to keep back their hands from 
blood ; to exhort youth, nurtured in Christian 
families, not rashly to sport with life, nor 



DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 1 19 

lightly to wring the widow's heart with sorrows 
and fill the orphan's eye with tears. 

In accomplishing the object which is before 
me, it will not be expected, as it is not neces- 
sary that I should give a history of duelling. 
You need not be informed that it originated in 
a dark and barbarous age. The polished Greek 
knew nothing of it ; the noble Roman was 
above it. Rome held in equal detestation the 
man who exposed his life unnecessarily, and 
him who refused to expose it when the public 
good required it. Her heroes were superior to 
private contests. They indulged no vengeance 
except against the enemies of their country. 
Their swords were not drawn unless her honor 
was in danger ; which honor they defended with 
their swords not only, but shielded with their 
bosoms also, and were then prodigal of their 
blood. But though Greece and Rome knew 
nothing of duelling, it exists. It exists among 
us ; and it exists at once the most rash, the 
most absurd and guilty practice, that ever dis- 
graced a Christian nation. Guilty — because it 
is a violation of the law. What law ? The law 
of God. " Thou shalt not kill." This prohibi- 
tion was delivered by God himself, at Sinai, to 
the Jews. And that it is of universal and per- 



I20 FLIP HA LET NOTT. 

petual obligation is manifest from the nature 
of the crime prohibited not only, but also from 
the express declaration of the Christian law- 
giver, who hath recognized its justice, and added 
to it the sanctions of his own authority. 

" Thou shalt not kill." Who? Thou, crea- 
ture. I, the Creator have given life, and thou 
shalt not take it away ! When and under 
what circumstances may I not take away life ? 
Never, and under no circumstances, without my 
permission. It is obvious that no discretion 
whatever is here given. The prohibition is ad- 
dressed to every individual where the law of 
God is promulgated, and the terms made use 
of are express and unequivocal. So that life 
cannot be taken under any pretext, without in- 
curring guilt, unless by a permission sanctioned 
by the same authority which sanctions the gen- 
eral law prohibiting it. From this law, it is 
granted, there are exceptions. These excep- 
tions, however, do not result from any authority 
which one creature has over the existence of 
another, but from the positive appointment of 
that eternal Being, whose " is the world and the 
fulness thereof. In whose hand is the soul of 
every living creature, and the breath of all man- 
kind." Even the authority which we claim 



DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 121 

over the lives of animals is not founded on a 
natural right, but on a positive grant, made by 
the Deity himself to Noah and his sons. This 
grant contains our warrant for taking the lives 
of animals. But if we may not take the lives 
of animals without permission from God, much 
less may we the life of man, made in his image. 

In what cases, then, has the Sovereign of 
life given this permission ? In rightful war ; by 
the civil magistrate : and in necessary self-de- 
fence. Besides these I do not hesitate to de- 
clare that in the oracles of God there are no 
others. He, therefore, who takes life in any 
other case, under whatever pretext, takes it un- 
warrantably, is guilty of what the Scriptures 
call murder, and exposes himself to the male- 
diction of that God who is an avenger of blood, 
and who hath said : " At the hand of every 
man's brother will I require the life of man — 
whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
blood be shed." 

The duellist contravenes the law of God not 
only but the law of man also. To the prohibi- 
tion of the former have been added the sanc- 
tions of the latter. Life taken in a duel, by 
the common law, is murder. And where this 
is not the case, the giving and receiving of a 



122 ELIPHALET NOTT. 

challenge only, is, by statute, considered a high 
misdemeanor, for which the principal and his 
second are declared infamous and disfranchised 
for twenty years. Under what accumulated 
circumstances of aggravation does the duellist 
jeopardize his own life, or take the life of his 
antagonist ? I am sensible that, in a licentious 
age, and when laws are made to yield to the 
vices of those who move in the higher circles, 
this crime is called by I know not what mild 
and accommodating name. But before these 
altars ; in this house of God, what is it ? It is 
murder — deliberate, aggravated murder. If the 
duellist deny this, let him produce his warrant 
from the author of life, for taking away from 
his creature the life which had been sovereignly 
given. If he cannot do this, beyond all con- 
troversy, he is a murderer ; for murder consists 
in taking away life without the permission, and 
contrary to the prohibition of Him who gave it. 
Who is it, then, that calls the duellist to the 
dangerous and deadly combat ? Is it God ? 
No ; on the contrary, he forbids. Is it, then, 
his country ? No ; she also utters her prohibi- 
tory voice. Who is it then ? A man of honor. 
A man, perhaps, whose honor is a name ; who 
prates, with polluted lips, about the sacredness 



DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 1 23 

of character, when his own is stained with 
crimes, and needs but the single shade of mur- 
der to complete the dismal and sickly picture. 
Every transgression of the divine law implies 
great guilt, because it is the transgression of in- 
finite authority. But the crime of deliberately 
and lightly taking life has peculiar aggrava- 
tions. It is a crime committed against the 
written law not only, but also against the dic- 
tates of reason, the remonstrances of conscience, 
and every tender and amiable feeling of the 
heart. To the unfortunate sufferer, it is the 
wanton violation of his most sacred rights. It 
snatches him from his friends and his comforts ; 
terminates his state of trial, and precipitates 
him, uncalled for, and perhaps unprepared, into 
the presence of his Judge. 

You will say the duellist feels no malice. Be 
it so. Malice, indeed, is murder in principle. 
But there may be murder in reason, and in fact, 
where there is no malice. Some other un- 
warrantable passion of principle may lead to 
the unlawful taking of human life. The high- 
wayman, who cuts the throat and rifles the 
pocket of the passing traveller, feels no malice. 
And could he, with equal ease and no greater 
danger of detection, have secured his booty 



124 ELIPHALET NOTT. 

without taking life, he would have stayed his 
arm over the palpitating bosom of his victim, 
and let the plundered suppliant pass. Would 
the imputation of cowardice have been inevita- 
ble to the duellist, if a challenge had not been 
given or accepted ? The imputation of want 
had been no less inevitable to the robber, if the 
money of the passing traveller had not been 
secured. Would the duellist have been willing 
to have spared the life of his antagonist, if the 
point of honor could otherwise have been 
gained ? So would the robber if the point of 
property could have been. Who can say that 
the motives of the one are not as urgent as the 
motives of the other? And the means, by 
which both obtain the object of their wishes, 
are the same. Thus, according to the dictates 
of reason, as well as the law of God, the high- 
wayman and the duellist stand on ground 
equally untenable, and support their guilty 
havoc of the human race by arguments equally 
fallacious. 

Is duelling guilty? — So it is absurd. It is 
absurd as a punishment, for it admits of no 
proportion to crimes ; and besides, virtue and 
vice, guilt and innocence, are equally exposed 
by it, to death or suffering. As a reparation, it 



DEA TH OF A LEX A NDER HA MIL TON. 1 2 5 

is still more absurd, for it makes the injured 
liable to a still greater injury. And as the 
vindication of personal character, it is absurd 
even beyond madness. 

One man of honor, by some inadvertence, or 
perhaps with design, injures the sensibility of 
another man of honor. In perfect character, 
the injured gentleman resents it. He challenges 
the offender. The offender accepts the chal- 
lenge. The time is fixed. The place is agreed 
upon. The circumstances, with an air of 
solemn mania, are arranged ; and the princi- 
pals, with their seconds and surgeons, retire 
under the cover of some solitary hill, or upon 
the margin of some unfrequented beach, to 
settle this important question of honor, by 
stabbing or shooting at each other. One or the 
other, or both the parties, fall in this gentleman- 
like contest. And what does this prove? It 
proves that one or the other, or both of them, 
as the case may be, are marksmen. But it 
affords no evidence that either of them possesses 
honor, probity, or talents. It is true, that he 
who falls in single combat has the honor of 
being murdered ; and he who takes his life, the 
honor of a murderer. Besides this, I know not 
of any glory that can redound to the infatuated 



126 ELIPHALET NOTT. 

combatants, except it be what results from hav- 
ing extended the circle of wretched widows, and 
added to the number of hapless orphans. And 
yet, terminate as it will, this frantic meeting, by 
a kind of magic influence, entirely varnishes 
over a defective and smutty character ; trans- 
forms vice to virtue, cowardice to courage ; 
makes falsehood, truth ; guilt, innocence, — in 
one word, it gives a new complexion to the 
whole state of things. The Ethiopian changes 
his skin, the leopard his spot, and the de- 
bauched and treacherous, having shot away 
the infamy of a sorry life, comes back to the 
field of perfectibility, quite regenerated, and, in 
the fullest sense, an honorable man. He is 
now fit for the company of gentlemen. He is 
admitted to that company, and should he again, 
by acts of vileness, stain this purity of character 
so nobly acquired, and should any one have the 
effrontery to say he has done so, again he 
stands ready to vindicate his honor, and by 
another act of homicide to wipe away the stain 
which has been attached to it * * * 

Ah ! ye tragic shores of Hoboken, crimsoned 
with the richest blood, I tremble at the crimes 
you record against us — the annual register of 
piurders which you keep and send up to God ! 



DEATH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 12/ 

Place of inhuman cruelty! beyond the limits of 
reason, of duty, and of religion, where man as- 
sumes a more barbarous nature, and ceases to 
be man ! What poignant, lingering sorrows do 
thy lawless combats occasion to surviving rela- 
tives ! Ye who have hearts of pity — ye who 
have experienced the anguish of dissolving 
friendship — who have wept, and still weep, over 
the mouldering ruins of departed kindred, ye 
can enter into this reflection. 

" How are the mighty fallen ! " And, regard- 
less as we are of vulgar deaths, shall not the fall 
of the mighty affect us ? A short time since, 
and he who is the occasion of our sorrows was 
the ornament of his country. He stood on an 
eminence, and glory covered him. From that 
eminence he has fallen, suddenly, forever fallen. 
His intercourse with the living world is now 
ended ; and those who would hereafter find 
him must seek him in the grave * * -5^ * 
Approach and behold, while I lift from his sep- 
ulchre its covering ! Ye admirers of his great- 
ness, ye emulous of his talents and his fame, 
approach and behold him now! How pale! 
How silent ! No martial bands admire the 
adroitness of his movements ; no fascinated 
throng weep, and melt, and tremble at his 



128 ELIPHALET NOTT. 

eloquence ! Amazing change ! A shroud ! a 
coffin ! a narrow, subterraneous cabin ! This is 
all that now remains of Hamilton ! And is this 
all that remains of Jiim ? During a life so 
transitory, what lasting monument, then, can 
our fondest hopes erect ? 

My brethren ! we stand on the borders of an 
awful gulf, which is swallowing up all things 
human. And is there, amidst this universal 
wreck, nothing stable, nothing abiding, nothing 
immortal, on which poor, frail, dying man can 
fasten ? Ask the hero, ask the statesman, whose 
wisdom you have been accustomed to revere, 
and he will tell you. He will tell you, did I 
say ? He has already told you from his death- 
bed, and his illumined spirit still whispers from 
the heavens the solemn admonition : 

" Mortals ! hastening to the tomb, and once 
the companions of my pilgrimage, take warning 
and avoid my errors ; cultivate the virtues I 
have recommended ; choose the Saviour I have 
chosen ; live disinterestedly ; live for immor- 
tality ; and would you rescue any thing from 
final dissolution, lay it up in God." 



JOHN RANDOLPH, 

OF VIRGINIA. 

(born 1773, DIED 1833.) 



ON THE MILITIA BILL HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

DEC. 10, 1811. 

Mr. Speaker : 

This is a question, as it has been presented 
to this House, of peace or war. In that light 
it has been argued ; in no other light can I 
consider it, after the declarations made by 
members of the Committee of Foreign Rela- 
tions * * * 

The Committee of Foreign Relations have, 
indeed, decided that the subject of arming the 
militia (which has been pressed upon them as 
indispensable to the public security) does not 
come within the scope of their authority. On 
what ground, I have been, and still am, unable 
to see, they have felt themselves authorized to 
recommend the raising of standing armies, with 
a view (as has been declared) of immediate war 



I30 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

— a war not of defence, but of conquest, of ag- 
grandizement, of ambition — a war foreign to 
the interests of this country ; to the interests of 
humanity itself. * * * 

I cannot refrain from smiling at the liberality 
of the gentleman in giving Canada to New 
York in order to strengthen the northern bal- 
ance of power; while, at the same time, he 
forewarns her that the western scale must pre- 
ponderate. I can almost fancy that I see the 
Capitol in motion toward the falls of Ohio ; 
after a short sojourn, taking its flight to the 
Mississippi, and finally alighting at Darien ; 
which, when the gentleman's dreams are real- 
ized, will be a most eligible seat of government 
for the new republic (or empire) of the two 
Americas ! But it seems that in 1808 we talked 
and acted foolishly, and to give some color of 
consistency to that folly we must now commit 
a greater. 

I hope we shall act a wise part ; take warning 
by our follies since we have become sensible of 
them, and resolve to talk and act foolishly no 
more. It is, indeed, high time to give over 
such preposterous language and proceedings. 
This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition 
of territory and subjects, is to be a new com- 




JOHN RANDOLPH. 



THE MILITIA BILL. I3I 

mentary on the doctrine that republicans are 
destitute of ambition ; that they are addicted 
to peace, wedded to the happiness and safety 
of the great body of their people. But it seems 
this is to be a holiday campaign ; there is to be 
no expense of blood, or of treasure on our part ; 
Canada is to conquer herself ; she is to be sub- 
dued by the principles of fraternity ! The 
people of that country are first to be seduced 
from their allegiance and converted into traitors, 
as preparatory to making them good citizens! 
Although I must acknowledge that some of 
our flaming patriots were thus manufactured, I 
do not think the process would hold good with 
a whole community. It is a dangerous experi- 
ment. We are to succeed in the French mode, 
by the system of fraternization — all is French. 
But how dreadfully it might be retorted on the 
southern and western slave-holding States. I 
detest this subornation of treason. No ; if 
we must have them, let them fall by the valor 
of our arms ; by fair, legitimate conquest ; not 
become the victims of treacherous seduction. 

I am not surprised at the war spirit which is 
manifesting itself in gentlemen from the South. 
In the year 1 805-6, in a struggle for the carrying 
trade of belligerent colonial produce, this country 



132 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

was most unwisely brought into collision with 
the great powers of Europe. By a series of 
most impolitic aud ruinous measures, utterly 
incomprehensible to every rational, sober- 
minded man, the Southern planters, by their 
own votes, have succeeded in knocking down 
the price of cotton to seven cents, and of to- 
bacco (a few choice crops excepted) to nothing ; 
and in raising the price of blankets (of which a 
few would not be amiss in a Canadian cam- 
paign), coarse woollens, and every article of 
first necessity, three or four hundred/^/* centum. 
And now, that by our own acts, we have 
brought ourselves into this unprecedented con- 
dition, we must get out of it in any way, but 
by an acknowledgment of our own want of 
wisdom and forecast. But is war the true rem- 
edy? Who will profit by it? Speculators; a 
few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the 
lottery; commissaries and contractors. Who 
must suffer by it ? The people. It is their 

blood, their taxes that must flow to support 
j^ * * * 

I am gratified to find gentlemen acknowledg- 
ing the demoralizing and destructive conse- 
quences of the non-importation law ; confessing 
the truth of all that its opponents foretold. 



THE MILITIA BILL. 133 

when it was enacted. And will you plunge 
yourselves in war, because you have passed a 
foolish and ruinous law, and are ashamed to 
repeal it? " But our good friend, the French 
emperor, stands in the way of its repeal, and we 
cannot go too far in making sacrifices to him, 
who has given such demonstration of his love 
for the Americans ; we must, in point of fact, 
become parties to his war. Who can be so 
cruel as to refuse him that favor?" My im- 
agination shrinks from the miseries of such a 
connection. I call upon the House to reflect, 
whether they are not about to abandon all 
reclamation for the unparalleled outrages, " in- 
sults, and injuries " of the French government ; 
to give up our claim for plundered millions; and 
I ask what reparation or atonement they can 
expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, 
after they shall have made a tender of their 
person to this great deflowerer of the virginity 
of republics. We have, by our own wise (I will 
not say wiseacre) measures, so increased the 
trade and wealth of Montreal and Quebec, that 
at last we begin to cast a wistful eye at Can- 
ada. Having done so much toward its im- 
provement, by the exercise of " our restrictive 
energies," we begin to think the laborer worthy 



134 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

of his hire, and to put in a claim for our por- 
tion. Suppose it ours, are we any nearer to 
our point ? As his minister said to the king of 
Epirus, " May we not as well take our bottle of 
wine before as after this exploit ? " Go! march 
to Canada ! leave the broad bosom of the 
Chesapeake and her hundred tributary rivers ; 
the whole line of sea-coast from Machias to St. 
Mary's, unprotected ! You have taken Quebec 
— have you conquered England ? Will you 
seek for the deep foundations of her power in 
the frozen deserts of Labrador ? 

" Her march is on the mountain wave, 
Her home is on the deep ! " 

Will you call upon her to leave your ports 
and harbors untouched only just till you can 
return from Canada, to defend them ? The 
coast is to be left defenceless, while men of the 
interior are revelling in conquest and spoil. ^ ^ * 

No sooner was the report laid on the table, 
than the vultures were flocking around their 
prey — the carcass of a great military establish- 
ment. Men of tainted reputation, of broken 
fortune (if they ever had any), and of battered 
constitutions, "choice spirits tired of the dull 
pursuits of civil life," were seeking after agen- 



THE MILITIA BILL. 135 

cies and commissions, willing to doze in gross 
stupidity over the public fire ; to light the pub- 
lic candle at both ends. Honorable men un- 
doubtedly there are ready to serve their country ; 
but what man of spirit, or of self-respect, will 
accept a commission in the present army ? The 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) ad- 
dressed himself yesterday exclusively to the 
"Republicans of the House." I know not 
whether I may consider myself as entitled to 
any part of the benefit of the honorable gen- 
tleman's discourse. It belongs not; however, to 
that gentleman to decide. If we must have an 
exposition of the doctrines of republicanism, I 
shall receive it from the fathers of the church, 
and not from the junior apprentices of the law. 
I shall appeal to my worthy friends from Caro- 
lina (Messrs. Macon and Stanford), " men with 
whom I have measured my strength," by whose 
side I have fought during the reign of terror; 
for it was indeed an hour of corruption, of op- 
pression, of pollution. It was not at all to my 
taste — that sort of republicanism which was 
supported, on this side of the Atlantic, by the 
father of the sedition law, John Adams, and by 
Peter Porcupine on the other. Republicanism ! 
of John Adams and William Cobbett ! * * * 



136 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

Gallant crusaders in the holy cause of repub- 
licanism. Such " republicanism does, indeed, 
mean any thing or nothing." Our people will 
not submit to be taxed for this war of conquest 
and dominion. The government of the United 
States was not calculated to wage offensive 
foreign war ; it was instituted for the common 
defence and the general welfare ; and whosoever 
should embark it in a war of offence, would put 
it to a test which it is by no means calculated 
to endure. Make it out that Great Britain has 
instigated the Indians on a late occasion, and I 
am ready for battle, but not for dominion. I 
am unwilling, however, under present circum- 
stances, to take Canada, at the risk of the Con- 
stitution, to embark in a common cause with 
France, and be dragged at the wheels of the car 
of some Burr or Bonaparte. For a gentleman 
from Tennessee, or Genesee, or Lake Cham- 
plain, there may be some prospect of advantage. 
Their hemp would bear a great price by the 
exclusion of foreign supply. In that, too, the 
great importers are deeply interested. The 
upper country of the Hudson and the lakes 
would be enriched by the supplies for the troops, 
which they alone could furnish. They would 
have the exclusive market ; to say nothing of 



THE MILITIA BILL. 137 

the increased preponderance from the acquisi- 
tion of Canada and that section of the Union, 
which the Southern and Western States have 
already felt so severely in the Apportionment 
bill. * * * 

Permit me now, sir, to call your attention to 
the subject of our black population. I will 
touch this subject as tenderly as possible. It is 
with reluctance that I touch it at all ; but in 
cases of great emergency, the State physician 
must not be deterred by a sickly, hysterical 
humanity, from probing the wound of his pa- 
tient; he must not be withheld by a fastidious 
and mistaken delicacy from representing his 
true situation to his friends, or even to the sick 
man himself, when the occasion calls for it. 
What is the situation of the slave-holding 
States? During the war of the Revolution, so 
fixed were their habits of subordination, that 
while the whole country was overrun by the 
enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was 
ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. 
During a war of seven years, with our country 
in possession of the enemy, no such danger 
was ever apprehended. But should we, there- 
fore, be unobservant spectators of the progress 
of society within the last twenty years ; of the 



138 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

silent but powerful change wrought, by time 
and chance, upon its composition and temper? 
When the fountains of the great deep of abomi- 
nation were broken up, even the poor slaves did 
not escape the general deluge. The French 
Revolution has polluted even them. * * * 

Men, dead to the operation of moral causes, 
have taken away from the poor slave his habit 
of loyalty and obedience to his master, which 
lightened his servitude by a double operation ; 
beguiling his own cares and disarming his 
master's suspicions and severity ; and now, like 
true empirics in politics, you are called upon to 
trust to the mere physical strength of the fet- 
ter which holds him in bondage. You have de- 
prived him of all moral restraint ; you have 
tempted him to eat of the fruit of the tree of 
knowledge, just enough to perfect him in wick- 
edness ; you have opened his eyes to his naked- 
ness ; you have armed his nature against the 
hand that has fed, that has clothed him, that 
has cherished him in sickness ; that hand which 
before he became a pupil of your school, he 
had been accustomed to press with respectful 
affection. You have done all this — and then 
show him the gibbet and the wheel, as incen- 
tives to a sullen, repugnant obedience. God 



THE MILITIA BILL. 139 

forbid, sir, that the Southern States should 
ever see an enemy on their shores, with these 
infernal principles of French fraternity in the 
van. While talking of taking Canada, some of 
us are shuddering for our own safety at home. 
I speak from facts, when I say, that the night- 
bell never tolls for fire in Richmond, that the 
mother does not hug her infant more closely to 
her bosom. I have been a witness of some of 
the alarms in the capital of Virginia. * * * 
Against whom are these charges brought ? 
Against men, who in the war of the Revolu- 
tion were in the councils of the nation, or 
fighting the battles of your country. And by 
whom are they made ? By runaways chiefly 
from the British dominions, since the breaking 
out of the French troubles. It is insufferable. 
It cannot be borne. It must and ought, with 
severity, to be put down in this House ; and 
out of it to meet the lie direct. We have no 
fellow-feeling for the suffering and oppressed 
Spaniards ! Yet even them we do not repro- 
bate. Strange ! that we should have no objec- 
tion to any other people or government, civil- 
ized or savage, in the whole world ! The great 
autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage 
of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers 



I40 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

and his divan of pirates are very civil, good 
sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty 
in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. 
"Turks, Jews, and infidels"; Melimelli or the 
Little Turtle ; barbarians and savages of every 
clime and color, are welcome to our arms. 
With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we 
can treat and trade. Name, however, but Eng- 
land, and all our antipathies are up in arms 
against her. Against whom ? Against those 
whose blood runs in our veins; in common with 
whom, we claim Shakespeare, and Newton, and 
Chatham, for our countrymen ; whose form of 
government is the freest on earth, our own only 
excepted ; from whom every valuable principle 
of our own institutions has been borrowed — 
representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, 
writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and 
criminal jurisprudence ; — against our fellow 
Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in 
religion, with ourselves. In what school did 
the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, 
Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of 
America, learn those principles, of civil liberty 
which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom 
and valor? American reistance to British 
usurpation has not been more warmly cherished 



THE MILITIA BILL. I4I 

by these great men and their compatriots ; not 
more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry, than 
by Chatham and his illustrious associates in the 
British Parliament. It ought to be remem- 
bered, too, that the heart of the English people 
was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt min- 
istry, and their servile tools, to whom we were 
not more opposed than they were. I trust that 
none such may ever exist among us ; for tools 
will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, 
however ruinous or wicked, of kings and minis- 
ters of state. I acknowledge the influence of a 
Shakespeare and a Milton upon my imagina- 
tion, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a 
Sidney upon my political principles, of a Chat- 
ham upon qualities which, would to God I 
possessed in common with that illustrious man ! 
of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus upon 
my religion. This is a British influence which 
I can never shake off. I allow much to the 
just and honest prejudices growing out of the 
Revolution. But by whom have they been 
suppressed, when they ran counter to the inter- 
ests of my country? By Washington. By 
whom, would you listen to them, are they most 
keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails 
of Paris, Newgate, and Kilmainham, since the 



142 JOHM RANDOLPH. 

breaking out of the French Revolution ; who, in 
this abused and insulted country, have set up for 
political teachers, and whose disciples give no 
other proof of their progress in republicanism, 
except a blind devotion to the most ruthless 
military despotism that the world ever saw. 
These are the patriots, who scruple not to brand 
with the epithet of Tor)^, the men (looking to- 
ward the seat of Col. Stewart) by whose blood 
your liberties have been cemented. These are 
they, who hold in such keen remembrance the 
outrages of the British armies, from which 
many of them are deserters. Ask these self- 
styled patriots where they were during the 
American war (for they are, for the most part, 
old enough to have borne arms), and you 
strike them dumb ; their lips are closed in eter- 
nal silence. If it were allowable to entertain 
partialities, every consideration of blood, lan- 
guage, religion, and interest, would incline us 
toward England : and yet, shall they alone be 
extended to France and her ruler, whom we 
are bound to believe a chastening God suffers 
as the scourge of a guilty world ! On all other 
nations he tramples ; he holds them in con- 
tempt ; England alone he hates ; he would, but 
he cannot, despise her ; fear cannot despise ; 
and shall we disparage our ancestors ? 



THE MILITIA BILL. 143 

But the outrages and injuries of England — 
bred up in the principles of the Revolution — I 
can never palliate, much less defend them. I 
well remember flying, with my mother and her 
new-born child, from Arnold and Philips ; and 
we were driven by Tarleton and other British 
Pandours from pillar to post, while her husband 
was fighting the battles of his country. The 
impression is indelible on my memory ; and yet 
(like my worthy old neighbor, who added seven 
buckshot to every cartridge at the battle of 
Guilford, and drew fine sight at his man) I must 
be content to be called a Tory by a patriot of 
the last importation. Let us not get rid of one 
evil (supposing it possible) at the expense of a 
greater ; mutatis mutandis, suppose France in 
possession of the British naval power — and to 
her the trident must pass should England be 
unable to wield it — what would be your condi- 
tion ? What would be the situation of your 
seaports, and their seafaring inhabitants ? Ask 
Hamburg, Lubec ! Ask Savannah i -5^ * * 

Shall republicans become the instruments of 
him who has effaced the title of Attila to the 
" scourge of God ! " Yet, even Attila, in the 
falling fortunes of civilization, had, no doubt, 
his advocates, his tools, his minions, his para- 



144 JOHN RANDOLPH. 

sites, in the very countries that he overran ; 
sons of that soil whereon his horse had trod ; 
where grass could never after grow. If per- 
fectly fresh, instead of being as I am, my mem- 
ory clouded, my intellect stupefied, my strength 
and spirits exhausted, I could not give utterance 
to that strong detestation which I feel toward 
(above all other works of the creation) such 
characters as Gengis, Tamerlane, Kouli-Khan, 
or Bonaparte. My instincts involuntarily revolt 
at their bare idea. Malefactors of the human 
race, who have ground down man to a mere 
machine of their impious and bloody ambition ! 
Yet under all the accumulated wrongs, and in- 
sults, and robberies of the last of these chief- 
tains, are we not, in point of fact, about to 
become a party to his views, a partner in his 
wars ? * * * 

I call upon those professing to be republicans 
to make good the promises, held out by their 
republican predecessors, when they came into 
power; promises which, for years afterward, they 
honestly, faithfully fulfilled. We have vaunted 
of paying off the national debt, of retrenching 
useless establishments ; and yet have now be- 
come as infatuated with standing armies, loans, 
taxes, navies, and war as ever were the Essex 
Junto 1 



JOSIAH QUINCY, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(born 1772, DIKD 1864.) 



ON THE ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA HOUSE OF 

REPRESENTATIVES, JAN. I4, 1811. 

Mr. Speaker : 

I address you, sir, with anxiety and distress of 
mind, with me, wholly unprecedented. The 
friends of this bill seem to consider it as the exer- 
cise of a common power ; as an ordinary affair; 
a mere municipal regulation, which they expect 
to see pass without other questions than those 
concerning details. But, sir, the principle of 
this bill materially affects the liberties and 
rights of the whole people of the United States. 
To me it appears that it would justify a revo- 
lution in this country ; and that, in no great 
length of time it may produce it. When I see 
the zeal and perseverance with which this bill 
has been urged along its parliamentary path, 
when I know the local interests and associ- 
145 



146 JO SI AH QUINCY. 

ated projects which combine to promote its 
success, all opposition to it seems manifestly 
unavailing. I am almost tempted to leave, 
without a struggle, my country to its fate. 
But, sir, while there is life, there is hope. So 
long as the fatal shaft has not yet sped, if 
Heaven so will, the bow may be broken and 
the vigor of the mischief-meditating arm 
withered. If there be a man in this House 
or nation, who cherishes the Constitution, under 
which we are assembled, as the chief stay of his 
hope, as the light which is destined to gladden 
his own day, and to soften even the gloom of 
the grave, by the prospects it sheds over 
his children, I fall not behind him in such 
sentiments. I will yield to no man in attach- 
ment to this Constitution, in veneration for the 
sages who laid its foundations, in devotion to 
those principles which form its cement and con- 
stitute its proportions. What then must be my 
feelings ; what ought to be the feelings of a 
man, cherishing such sentiments, when he sees 
an act contemplated which lays ruin at the foot 
of all these hopes ? When he sees a principle 
of action about to be usurped, before the opera- 
tion of which the bands of this Constitution are 
no more than flax before the fire, or stubble be- 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. I47 

fore the whirlwind. When this bill passes, such 
an act is done ; and such a principle is usurped. 

Mr, Speaker, there is a great rule of human 
conduct, which he who honestly observes, can- 
not err widely from the path of his sought duty. 
It is, to be very scrupulous concerning the prin- 
ciples you select as the test of your rights and 
obligations ; to be very faithful in noticing the 
result of their application ; and to be very fear- 
less in tracing and exposing their immediate 
effects and distant consequences. Under the 
sanction of this rule of conduct, I am compelled 
to declare it as my deliberate opinion, that, if 
this bill passes, the bonds of this union are, virtu- 
ally, dissolved ; that the States which compose it 
are free from their moral obligations, and that 
as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty 
of some, to prepare, definitely, for a separation : 
amicably, if they can ; violently, if they must. 

(Mr. Quincy was here called to order by Mr. 
Poindexter, delegate from the Mississippi ter- 
ritory, for the words in italics. After it was 
decided, upon an appeal to the House, that 
Mr. Quincy was in order, he proceeded.) 

I rejoice, Mr. Speaker, at the result of this 
appeal. Not from any personal consideration, 
but from the respect paid to the essential rights 



148 yOSIAH QUINCY. 

of the people, in one of their representatives. 
When I spoke of the separation of the States, as 
resulting from the violation of the Constitution 
contemplated in this bill, I spoke of it as a neces- 
sity, deeply to be deprecated ; but as resulting 
from causes so certain and obvious as to be 
absolutely inevitable, when the effect of the 
principle is practically experienced. It is to 
preserve, to guard the Constitution of my 
country, that I denounce this attempt. I would 
rouse the attention of gentlemen from the 
apathy with which they seem beset. These ob- 
servations are not made in a corner ; there is no 
low intrigue ; no secret machination. I am on 
the people's own ground ; to them I appeal con- 
cerning their own rights, their own liberties, 
their own intent, in adopting this Constitution. 
The voice I have uttered, at which gentlemen 
startle with such agitation, is no unfriendly 
voice. I intended it as a voice of warning. By 
this people, and by the event, if this bill passes, 
I am willing to be judged, whether it be not 
a voice of wisdom. 

The bill which is now proposed to be passed 
has this assumed principle for its basis ; that 
the three branches of this national government, 
without recurrence to conventions of the pec- 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. I49 

pie in the States, or to the Legislatures of 
the States, are authorized to admit new. 
partners to a share of the political power, in 
countries out of the original limits of the United 
States. Now, this assumed principle, I main- 
tain to be altogether without any sanction in 
the Constitution. I declare it to be a manifest 
and atrocious usurpation of power; of a nature, 
dissolving, according to undeniable principles 
of moral law, the obligations of our national 
compact ; and leading to all the awful con- 
sequences which flow from such a state of things. 
Concerning this assumed principle, which is the 
basis of this bill, this is the general position, on 
which I rest my argument ; that if the author- 
ity, now proposed to be exercised, be delegated 
to the three branches of the government by 
virtue of the Constitution, it results either from 
its general nature, or from its particular pro- 
visions. I shall consider distinctly both these 
sources, in relation to this pretended power. 

Touching the general nature of the instru- 
ment called the Constitution of the United 
States there is no obscurity ; it has no fabled 
descent, like the palladium of ancient Troy, 
from the heavens. Its origin is not confused 
by the mists of time, or hidden by the darkness 



150 JO SI AH QUINCY. 

of passed, unexplored ages; it is the fabric of 
.our day. Some now living, had a share in its 
construction ; all of us stood by, and saw the 
rising of the edifice. There can be no doubt 
about its nature. It is a political compact. By 
whom ? And about what ? The preamble to 
the instrument will answer these questions. 

" We, the people of the United States, in 
order to form a more perfect union, establish 
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for 
the common defence, promote the general wel- 
fare, and secure the blessings of liberty to our- 
selves and our posterity, do ordain and establish 
this Constitution, for the United States of 
America." 

It is, we the people of the United States, for 
ourselves and our posterity ; not for the people 
of Louisana ; nor for the people of New Or- 
leans or of Canada. None of these enter into 
the scope of the instrument ; it embraces only 
"the United States of America." Who these 
are, it may seem strange in this place to in- 
quire. But truly, sir, our imaginations have, of 
late, been so accustomed to wander after new 
settlements to the very ends of the earth, that 
it will not be time ill spent to inquire what this 
phrase means, and what it includes. These are 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. I51 

not terms adopted at hazard ; they have refer- 
ence to a state of things existing anterior to the 
Constitution. When the people of the present 
United States began to contemplate a sever- 
ance from their parent State, it was a long 
time before they fixed definitely the name by 
which they would be designated. In 1774, they 
called themselves " the Colonies and Provinces 
of North America." In 1775, " the Repre- 
sentatives of the United Colonies of North 
America." In the Declaration of Independence, 
" the Representatives of the United States of 
America." And finally, in the articles of con- 
federation, the style of the confederacy is de- 
clared to be " the United States of America." 
It was with reference to the old articles of con- 
federation, and to preserve the identity and 
established individuality of their character, that 
the preamble to this Constitution, not content, 
simply, with declaring that it is " we the people 
of the United States," who enter into this com- 
pact, adds that it is for " the United States 'of 
America." Concerning the territory contem- 
plated by the people of the United States, in 
these general terms, there can be no dispute ; 
it is settled by the treaty of peace, and included 
within the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Croix, the 



152 JO SI AH QUINCY. 

lakes, and more precisely, so far as relates to 
the frontier, having relation to the present 
argument, within " a line to be drawn through 
the middle of the river Mississippi, until it in- 
tersect the northernmost part of the thirty- 
first degree of north latitude, thence within a 
line drawn due east on this degree of latitude 
to the river Apalachicola, thence along the 
middle of this river to its junction with the 
Flint River, thence straight to the head of the 
St. Mary's River, and thence down the St. 
Mary's to the Atlantic Ocean." 

I have been thus particular to draw the minds 
of gentlemen, distinctly, to the meaning of the 
terms used in the preamble ; to the extent 
which " the United States " then included ; and 
to the fact, that neither New Orleans, nor 
Louisiana, was within the comprehension of the 
terms of this instrument. It is sufificient for 
the present branch of my argument to say, that 
there is nothing, in the general nature of this 
compact, from which the power, contemplated 
to be exercised in this bill, results. On the 
contrary, as the introduction of a new associate 
in political power implies, necessarily, a new di- 
vision of power, and consequent diminution of 
the relative proportion of the former proprietors 



ADMISSION OF lOUISIANA. I 53 

of it, there can, certainly, be nothing more ob- 
vious, than that from the general nature of the 
instrument no power can result to diminish and 
give away, to strangers, any proportion of the 
rights of the original partners. If such a power 
exist, it must be found, then, in the particular 
provisions in the Constitution. The question 
now arising is, in which of these provisions is 
given the power to admit new States, to be 
created in territories beyond the limits of the 
old United States. If it exist anywhere, it is 
either in the third section of the fourth article 
of the Constitution, or in the treaty-making 
power. If it result from neither of these, it is 
not pretended to be found anywhere else. 

That part of the third section of the fourth 
article, on which the advocates of this bill rely, 
is the following : " New States may be admitted 
by the Congress, into this Union ; but no new 
State shall be formed or erected within the 
jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be 
formed by the junction of two or more States, 
or parts of States, without the consent of the 
Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as 
of the Congress." 

I know, Mr. Speaker, that the first clause of 
this paragraph has been read, with all the su- 



154 yOSIAH QUINCY. 

perciliousness of a grammarian's triumph — 
".New States may be admitted by the Congress 
into this Union," — accompanied with this most 
consequential inquiry : " Is not this a new State 
to be admitted? And is there not here an ex- 
press authority?" I have no doubt this is a 
full and satisfactory argument to every one who 
is content with the mere colors and superficies 
of things. And if we were now at the bar of 
some stall-fed justice, the inquiry would insure 
the victory to the maker of it, to the manifest 
delight of the constables and suitors of his 
court. But, sir, we are now before the tribunal 
of the whole American people ; reasoning con- 
cerning their liberties, their rights, their Consti- 
tution. These are not to be made the victims 
of the inevitable obscurity of general terms; 
nor the sport of verbal criticism. The question 
is concerning the intent of the American people, 
the proprietors of the old United States, when 
they agreed to this article. Dictionaries and 
spelling-books are here of no authority. Neither 
Johnson, nor Walker, nor Webster, nor Dil- 
worth, has any voice in this matter. Sir, the 
question concerns the proportion of power re- 
served, by this Constitution, to every State in 
this Union, Have the three branches of this 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. 155 

government a right, at will, to weaken and out- 
weigh the influence, respectively secured to each 
State in this compact, by introducing, at pleas- 
ure, new partners, situate beyond the old limits 
of the United States ? The question has not 
relation merely to New Orleans. The great 
objection is to the principle of the bill. If this 
principle be admitted, the whole space of 
Louisiana, greater, it is s^aid, than the entire ex- 
tent of the old United States, will be a mighty 
theatre, in which this government assumes the 
right of exercising this unparalleled power. 
And it will be ; there is no concealment, it is 
intended to be exercised. Nor will it stop 
until the very name and nature of the old part- 
ners be overwhelmed by new-comers into the 
confederacy. Sir, the question goes to the very 
root of the power and influence of the present 
members of this Union. The real intent of this 
article, is, therefore, an injury of most serious 
import ; and is to be settled only by a recur- 
rence to the known history and known relations 
of this people and their Constitution. These, 
I maintain, support this position, that the terms 
"new States," in this article, do not intend 
new political sovereignties, with territorial an- 
nexations, to be created without the original 
limits of the United States. * * * 



156 JO SI AH QUINCY. 

But there is an argument stronger even than 
all those which have been produced, to be 
drawn from the nature of the power here pro- 
posed to be exercised. Is it possible that such 
a power, if it had been intended to be given by 
the people, should be left dependent upon the 
effect of general expressions, and such, too, as 
were obviously applicable to another subject, 
to a particular exigency contemplated at that 
time ? Sir, what is this power we propose now 
to usurp ? Nothing less than a power changing 
all the proportions of the weight and influence 
possessed by the potent sovereignties composing 
this Union. A stranger is to be introduced to 
an equal share without their consent. Upon 
a principle pretended to be deduced from the 
Constitution, this government, after this bill 
passes, may and will multiply foreign partners 
in power at its own mere motion ; at its irre- 
sponsible pleasure ; in other words, as local in- 
terests, party passions, or ambitious views may 
suggest. It is a power that from its nature 
never could be delegated ; never was delegated ; 
and as it breaks down all the proportions of 
power guaranteed by the Constitution to the 
States, upon which their essential security de- 
pends, utterly annihilates the moral force of this 



ADMISSION OF LO UISIA NA. I 5 7 

political conduct. Would this people, so wisely 
vigilant concerning their rights, have transferred 
to Congress a power to balance, at its will, the 
political weight of any one State, much more 
of all the States, by authorizing it to create new 
States, at its pleasure, in foreign countries, not 
pretended to be within the scope of the Con- 
stitution, or the conception of the people at 
the time of passing it ? This is not so much a 
question concerning the exercise of sovereignty, 
as it is who shall be sovereign — whether the 
proprietors of the good old United States shall 
manage their own affairs in their own way ; or 
whether they, and their Constitution, and their 
political rights, shall be trampled under foot by 
foreigners, introduced through a breach of the 
Constitution. The proportion of the political 
weight of each sovereign State constituting 
this Union depends upon the number of the 
States which have voice under the compact. 
This number the Constitution permits us to 
multiply at pleasure within the limits of the 
original United States, observing only the ex- 
pressed limitations in the Constitution. But 
when, in order to increase your power of aug- 
menting this number, you pass the old limits, 
you are guilty of a violation of the Constitu- 



158 yOSIAH QUINCY. 

tion in a fundamental point ; and in one, also, 
which is totally inconsistent with the intent of 
the contract and the safety of the States which 
established the association. What is the prac- 
tical difference to the old partners whether they 
hold their liberties at the will of a master, or 
whether by admitting exterior States on an 
equal footing with the original States, arbiters 
are constituted, who, by availing themselves of 
the contrariety of interests and views, which in 
such a confederacy necessarily will arise, hold 
the balance among the parties which exist and 
govern us by throwing themselves into the 
scale most comformable to their purpose ? In 
both cases there is an effective despotism. But 
the last is the more galling, as we carry the 
chain in the name and gait of freemen. 

I have thus shown, and whether fairly, I am 
willing to be judged by the sound discretion of 
the American people, that the power proposed 
to be usurped in this bill, results neither from 
the general nature nor the particular provisions 
of the Federal Constitution ; and that it is a pal- 
pable violation of it in a fundamental point ; 
whence flow all the consequences I have in- 
dicated. 

" But," says the gentleman from Tennessee 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. I 59 

(Mr. Rhea), " these people have been seven years 
citizens of the United States." I deny it, sir. 
As citizens of New Orleans, or of Louisiana, 
they never have been, and by the mode pro- 
posed they never will be, citizens of the United 
States. They may girt upon us for a moment, 
but no real cement can grow from such an as- 
sociation. What the real situation of the in- 
habitants of those foreign countries is, I shall 
have occasion to show presently. " But," says the 
same gentleman : " if I have a farm, have not I 
a right to purchase another farm, in my neigh- 
borhood, and settle my sons upon it, and in time 
admit them to a share in the management of 
my household?" Doubtless, sir. But are 
these cases parallel ? Are the three branches of 
this government owners of this farm, called the 
United States ? I desire to thank heaven they 
are not. I hold my life, liberty, and property, 
and the people of the State from which I have 
the honor to be a representative hold theirs, by 
a better tenure than any this National Govern- 
ment can give. Sir, I know your virtue. And 
I thank the Great Giver of every good gift, that 
neither the gentleman from Tennessee, nor his 
comrades, nor any, nor all the members of this 
House, nor of the other branch of the Legisla- 



l6o JO SI AH QUINCY. 

ture, nor the good gentleman who lives in the 
palace yonder, nor all combined, can touch 
these my essential rights, and those of my 
friends and constituents, except in a limited and 
prescribed form. No, sir. We hold these by 
the laws, customs, and principles of the com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts. Behind her 
ample shield, we find refuge, and feel safety. I 
beg gentlemen not to act upon the principle, 
that the commonwealth of Massachusetts is 
their farm. 

" But," the gentleman adds, " what shall we 
do, if we do not admit the people of Louisiana 
into our Union ? Our children are settling 
that country." Sir, it is no concern of mine 
what he does. Because his children have run 
wild and uncovered into the woods, is that a 
reason for him to break into my house, or the 
houses of my friends, to filch our children's 
clothes, in order to cover his children's naked- 
ness. This Constitution never was, and never 
can be, strained to lap over all the wilderness of 
the West, without essentially affecting both the 
rights and convenience of its real proprietors. 
It was never constructed to form a covering 
for the inhabitants of the Missouri and Red 
River country'. And whenever it is attempted 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. l6l 

to be stretched over them, it will rend asunder. 
I have done with this part of my argument. It 
rests upon this fundamental principle, that the 
proportion of political power, subject only to 
internal modifications, permitted by the Consti- 
tution, is an unalienable, essential, intangible 
right. When it is touched, the fabric is an- 
nihilated ; for, on the preservation of these pro- 
portions, depend our rights and liberties. 

If we recur to the known relations existing 
among the States at the time of the adoption 
of this Constitution, the same conclusions will 
result. The various interests, habits, manners, 
prejudices, education, situation, and views, 
which excited jealousies and anxieties in the 
breasts of some of our most distinguished citi- 
zens, touching the result of the proposed Con- 
stitution, were potent obstacles to its adop- 
tion. The immortal leader of our Revolution, 
in his letter to the President of the old Con- 
gress, written as president of the convention 
which formed this compact, thus speaks on this 
subject : '' It is at all times difificult to draw, 
with precision, the line between those rights 
which must be surrendered, and those which 
may be reserved ; and on the present occasion 
this difficulty was increased by a difference 



1 62 JO SI AH QUINCY. 

among the several States, as to their situation, 
extent, habits, and particular interests." 

The debates of that period will show that the 
effect of the slave votes upon the political in- 
fluence of this part of the country, and the an- 
ticipated variation of the weight of power to 
the West, were subjects of great and just 
jealousy to some of the best patriots in the 
Northern and Eastern States. Suppose, then, 
that it had been distinctly foreseen that, in 
addition to the effect of this weight, the whole 
population of a world beyond the Mississippi 
was to be brought into this and the other 
branch of the Legislature, to form our laws, con- 
trol our rights, and decide our destiny. Sir, 
can it be pretended that the patriots of that 
day would for one moment have listened to it ? 
They were not madmen. They had not taken 
degrees at the hospital of idiocy. They knew 
the nature of man, and the effect of his com- 
binations in political societies. They knew 
that when the weight of particular sections of 
a confederacy was greatly unequal, the result- 
ing power would be abused ; that it was not in 
the nature of man to exercise it with modera- 
tion. The very extravagance of the intended 
use is a conclusive evidence against the possi- 



• ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. 1 63 

bility of the grant of such a power as is here 
proposed. Why, sir, I have already heard of six 
States, and some say there will be, at no great 
distance of time, more. I have also heard that 
the mouth of the Ohio will be far to the east of 
the centre of the contemplated empire. If the 
bill is passed, the principle is recognized. All 
the rest are mere questions of expediency. It 
is impossible such a power could be granted. 
It was not for these men that our fathers 
fought. It was not for them this Constitution 
was adopted. You have no authority to throw the 
rights and liberties and property of this people 
into " hotch-pot " with the wild men on the 
Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more re- 
spectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Ameri- 
cans, who bask on the sands in the mouth of the 
Mississippi. I make no objection to these from 
their want of moral qualities or political light. 
The inhabitants of New Orleans are, I suppose, 
like those of all other countries, some good, 
some bad, some indifferent. 

I will add only a few words, in relation to the 
moral and political consequences of usurping 
this power. I have said that it would be a 
virtual dissolution of the Union ; and gentle- 
men express great sensibility at the expression. 



164 JO SI AH QUINCY. 

But the true source of terror is not the declara- 
tion I have made, but the deed }'ou propose. 
Is there a moral principle of public law better 
settled, or more conformable to the plainest 
suggestions of reason, than that the violation 
of a contract by one of the parties may be con- 
sidered as exempting the other from its obliga- 
tions ? Suppose, in private life, thirteen form 
a partnership, and ten of them undertake to 
admit a new partner without the concurrence 
of the other three, would it not be at their op- 
tion to abandon the partnership, after so palpa- 
ble an infringement of their rights ? How much 
more, in the political partnership, where the 
admission of new associates, without previous 
authority, is so pregnant with obvious dangers 
and evils ! Again, it is settled as a principle of 
morality, among writers on public law, that no 
person can be obliged, beyond his intent at the 
time of contract. Now who believes, who dare 
assert, that it was the intention of the people, 
when they adopted this Constitution, to assign, 
eventually, to New Orleans and Louisiana, a 
portion of their political power ; and to invest 
all the people those extensive regions might 
hereafter contain, with an authority over them- 
selves and their descendants ? When you throw 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. 165 

the weight of Louisiana into the scale, you de- 
stroy the poHtical equipoise contemplated at 
the time of forming the contract. Can any man 
venture to affirm that the people did intend 
such a comprehension as you now, by construc- 
tion, give it ? Or can it be concealed that, be- 
yond its fair and acknowledged intent, such a 
compact has no moral force ? If gentlemen are 
so alarmed at the bare mention of the conse- 
quences, let them abandon a measure which, 
sooner or later, will produce them. How long 
before the seeds of discontent will ripen, no man 
can foretell. But it is the part of wisdom not 
to multiply or scatter them. Do you suppose 
the people of the Northern and Atlantic States 
will, or ought to, look on with patience and see 
Representatives and Senators, from the Red 
River and Missouri, pouring themselves upon 
this and the other floor, managing the concerns 
of a sea-board fifteen hundred miles, at least, 
from their residence ; and having a prepon- 
derancy in councils, into which, constitutionally, 
they could never have been admitted ? I have 
no hesitation upon this point. They neither 
will see it, nor ought to see it, with content. It 
is the part of a wise man to foresee danger and 
to hide himself. This great usurpation, which 



i66 



yOSIAH QUINCY. 



creeps into this House, under the plausible ap- 
pearance of giving content to that important 
point, New Orleans, starts up a gigantic power 
to control the nation. Upon the actual condi- 
tion of things, there is, there can be, no need of 
concealment. It is apparent to the blindest 
vision. By the course of nature, and conforma- 
ble to the acknowledged principles of the Con- 
stitution, the sceptre of power, in this country, 
is passing toward the Northwest. Sir, there is 
to this no objection. The right belongs to that 
quarter of the country. Enjoy it ; it is yours. 
Use the powers granted as you please. But 
take care, in your haste after effectual domin- 
ion, not to overload the scale by heaping it 
with these new acquisitions. Grasp not too 
eagerly at your purpose. In your speed after 
uncontrolled sway, trample not down this Con- 
stitution. * * * 

New States are intended to be formed beyond 
the Mississippi. There is no limit to men's 
imaginations, on this subject, short of Califor- 
nia and Columbia River. When I said that the 
bill would justify a revolution and would pro- 
duce it, I spoke of its principle and its practical 
consequences. To this principle and those con- 
sequences I would call the attention of this 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. 167 

House and nation. If it be about to introduce 
a condition of things absolutely insupportable, 
it becomes wise and honest men to anticipate 
the evil, and to warn and prepare the people 
against the event. I have no hesitation on the 
subject. The extension of this principle to the 
States contemplated beyond the Mississippi, 
cannot, will not, and ought not to be borne. 
And the sooner the people contemplate the 
unavoidable result the better ; the more hope 
that the evils may be palliated or removed. 

Mr. Speaker, what is this liberty of which so 
much is said ? Is it to walk about this earth, 
to breathe this air, to partake the common 
blessings of God's providence ? The beasts of 
the field and the birds of the air unite with us 
in such privileges as these. But man boasts a 
purer and more ethereal temperature. His 
mind grasps in its view the past and future, as 
well as the present. We live not for ourselves 
alone. That which we call liberty is that prin- 
ciple on which the essential security of our 
political condition depends. It results from 
the limitations of our political system, pre- 
scribed in the Constitution. These limitations, 
so long as they are faithfully observed, main- 
tain order, peace, and safety. When they are 



l6S JO SI AH QUINCY. 

violated, in essential particulars, all the concur- 
rent spheres of authority rush against each 
other ; and disorder, derangement, and convul- 
sion are, sooner or later, the necessary conse- 
quences. 

With respect to this love of our Union, con- 
cerning which so much sensibility is expressed, 
I have no fears about analyzing its nature. 
There is in it nothing of mystery. It depends 
upon the qualities of that Union, and it results 
from its effects upon our and our country's 
happiness. It is valued for " that sober cer- 
tainty of waking bliss" which it enables us to 
realize. It grows out of the affections, and has 
not, and cannot be made to have, any thing 
universal in its nature. Sir, I confess it : the 
first public love of my heart is the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts. There is my fireside ; 
there are the tombs of my ancestors — 

" Low lies that land, yet blest with fruitful stores, 
Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores ; 
And none, ah ! none, so lovely to my sight, 
Of all the lands which heaven o'erspreads with light." 

The love of this Union grows out of this at- 
tachment to my native soil, and is rooted in it. 
I cherish it, because it affords the best external 



ADMISSION OF LOUISIANA. 169 

hope of her peace, her prosperity, her indepen- 
dence, I oppose this bill from no animosity to 
the people of New Orleans ; but from the deep 
conviction that it contains a principle incom- 
patible with the liberties and safety of my 
country. I have no concealment of my opinion. 
The bill, if it passes, is a death-blow to the 
Constitution. It may, afterward, linger ; but, 
lingering, its fate will, at no very distant period, 
be consummated. 



HENRY CLAY, 

OF KENTUCKY. 

(born 1777, DIED 1852.) 



ON THE WAR OF l8l2 — HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
JAN. 8, 1813. 

Sir, gentlemen appear to me to forget that 
they stand on American soil ; that they are not 
in the British House of Commons, but in the 
chamber of the House of Representatives of 
the United States; that we have nothing to do 
with the affairs of Europe, the partition of terri- 
tory and sovereignty there, except so far as 
these things affect the interests of our own 
country. Gentlemen transform themselves into 
the Burkes, Chathams, and Pitts of another 
country, and, forgetting, from honest zeal, the 
interests of America, engage with European 
sensibility in the discussion of European inter- 
ests. If gentlemen ask me whether I do not 
view with regret and horror the concentration 
of such vast power in the hands of Bona- 
170 



ON THE WAR OF 1812. I71 

parte, I reply that I do. I regret to see the 
Emperor of China holding such immense sway 
over the fortunes of millions of our species. I 
regret to see Great Britain possessing so un- 
controlled a command overall the waters of the 
globe. If I had the ability to distribute among 
the nations of Europe their several portions of 
power and of sovereignty, I would say that 
Holland should be resuscitated and given the 
weight she enjoyed in the days of her De Witts. 
I would confine France within her natural 
boundaries, the Alps, Pyrenees, and the Rhine, 
and make her a secondary naval power only. 
I would abridge the British maritime power, 
raise Prussia and Austria to their original con- 
dition, and preserve the integrity of the Empire 
of Russia. But these are speculations. I look 
at the political transactions of Europe, with the 
single exception of their possible bearing upon 
us, as I do at the history of other countries and 
other times. I do not survey them with half 
the interest that I do the movements in South 
America. Our political relation with them is 
much less important than it is supposed to be. 
I have no fears of French or English subjuga- 
tion. If we are united we are too powerful for 
the mightiest nation in Europe or all Europe 



172 HENRY CLAY. 

combined. If we are separated and torn asun- 
der, we shall become an easy prey to the weak- 
est of them. In the latter dreadful contingency 
our country will not be worth preserving. 

Next to the notice which the opposition has 
found itself called upon to bestow upon the 
French Emperor, a distinguished citizen of 
Virginia, formerly President of the United 
States, has never for a moment failed to receive 
their kindest and most repectful attention. An 
honorable gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Quincy), of whom I am sorry to say it becomes 
necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, 
to take some notice, has alluded to him in a re- 
markable manner. Neither his retirement from 
public office, his eminent services, nor his ad- 
vanced age, can exempt this patriot from the 
coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir. 
In 1801 he snatched from the rude hand of 
usurpation the violated Constitution of his 
country, and that is his crime. He preserved 
that instrument, in form, and substance, and 
spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to 
come, and for this he can never be forgiven. 
How vain and impotent is party rage, directed 
against such a man. He is not more elevated 
by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his 



ON THE WAR OF 1812. 1/3 

own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the 
serenity of his mind, and the consciousness of 
a well-spent life, above the malignant passions 
and bitter feelings of the day. No ! his own 
beloved Monticello is not less moved by the 
storms that beat against its sides than is this 
illustrious man by the bowlings of the whole 
British pack, set loose from the Essex kennel. 
When the gentleman to whom I have been 
compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust 
with that of his abused ancestors, when he shall 
have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives 
at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals 
of a certain junto, the name of Jefferson will be 
hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and 
cherished as the second founder of the liberties 
of the people, and the period of his administra- 
tion will be looked back to as one of the happi- 
est and brightest epochs of American history ; 
an oasis in the midst of a sandy desert. But I 
beg the gentleman's pardon ; he has already se- 
cured to himself a more imperishable fame than 
I had supposed ; I think it was about four years 
that he submitted to the House of Representa- 
tives an initiative proposition for the impeach- 
ment of Mr. JefTerson. The house conde- 
scended to consider it. The gentleman de- 



174 HENRY CLAY. 

bated it with his usual temper, moderation, and 
urbanity. The house decided upon it in 
the most solemn manner, and, although the 
gentleman had somehow obtained a second, the 
final vote stood one for, and one hundred and 
seventeen against, the proposition. * * * 

But sir, I must speak of another subject, 
which I never think of but with feelings of the 
deepest awe. The gentleman from Massachu- 
setts, in imitation of some of his predecessors 
of 1799, has entertained us with a picture of 
cabinet plots, presidential plots, and all sorts of 
plots, which have been engendered by the 
diseased state of the gentleman's imagination. 
I wish, sir, that another plot, of a much 
more serious and alarming character — a plot 
that aims at the dismemberment of our Union 
— had only the same imaginary existence. 
But no man, who has paid any attention 
to the tone of certain prints and to trans- 
actions in a particular quarter of the Union, 
for several years past, can doubt the exist- 
ence of such a plot. It was far, very far 
from my intention to charge the opposition 
with such a design. No, I believe them gen- 
erally incapable of it. But I cannot say as 
much for some who have been unworthily as- 



ON THE WAR OF 1812. ' 1 75 

sociated with them in the quarter of the Union 
to which I have referred. The gentleman can- 
not have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered 
even on the floor of this house, " peaceably if 
we can, forcibly if we must," nearly at the very 
time Henry's mission was undertaken. The 
flagitiousness of that embassy had been at- 
tempted to be concealed by directing the pub- 
lic attention to the price which, the gentleman 
says, was given for the disclosure. As if any 
price could change the atrociousness of the at- 
tempt on the part of Great Britain, or could ex- 
tenuate, in the slightest degree, the offence of 
those citizens, who entertained and delib- 
erated on a proposition so infamous and un- 
natural * * * But, sir, I will quit this un- 
pleasant subject. * * * 

The war was declared because Great Britain 
arrogated to herself the pretension of regulating 
our foreign trade, under the delusive name of 
retaliatory orders in council — a pretension by 
which she undertook to proclaim to American 
enterprise, " thus far shalt thou go, and no 
further " — orders which she refused to revoke 
after the alleged cause of their enactment had 
ceased ; because she persisted in the practice of 
impressing American seamen ; because she had 



176 HENRY CLAY. 

instigated the Indians to commit hostilities 
against us ; and because she refused indemnity 
for her past injuries upon our commerce. I 
throw out of the question other wrongs. So 
undeniable were the causes of the war, so 
powerfully did they address themselves to the 
feelings of the whole American people, that 
when the bill was pending before this House, 
gentlemen in the opposition, although provoked 
to debate, would not, or could not, utter one 
syllable against it. It is true, they wrapped 
themselves up in sullen silence, pretending they 
did not choose to debate such a question in 
secret session. While speaking of the proceed- 
ings on that occasion I beg to be permitted to 
advert to another fact which transpired — an 
important fact, material for the nation to know, 
and which I have often regretted had not been 
spread upon our journals. My honorable col- 
league (Mr. McKee) moved, in committee of 
the whole, to comprehend France in the war; 
and when the question was taken upon the 
proposition, there appeared but ten votes in 
support of it, of whom seven belonged to 
this side of the house, and three only to the 
other. * * * 

It is not to the British principle (of alle- 



ON THE WAR OF 1812. 1/7 

glance), objectionable as it is, that we are alone 
to look ; it is to her practice, no matter what 
guise she puts on. It is in vain to assert the 
inviolability of the obligation of allegiance. It 
is in vain to set up the plea of necessity, and to 
allege that she cannot exist without the im- 
pressment of HER seamen. The naked truth 
is, she comes, by her press-gangs, on board of 
our vessels, seizes OUR native as well as natural- 
ized seamen, and drags them into her service. 
It is the case, then, of the assertion of an 
erroneous principle, and of a practice not con- 
formable to the asserted principle — a principle 
which, if it were theoretically right, must be 
forever practically wrong — a practice which can 
obtain countenance from no principle whatever, 
and to submit to which, on our part, would 
betray the most abject degradation. We are 
told, by gentlemen in the opposition, that 
government has not done all that was in- 
cumbent on it to do, to avoid just cause of 
complaint on the part of Great Britain ; that 
in particular the certificates of protection, 
authorized by the act of 1796, are fraudulently 
used. Sir, government has done too much in 
granting those paper protections. I can never 
think of them without being shocked. They 



1/8 HENRY CLAY. 

resemble the passes which the master grants to 
his negro slave : " Let the bearer, Mungo, pass 
and repass without molestation." What do 
they imply ? That Great Britain has a right to 
seize all who are not provided with them. 
From their very nature, they must be liable to 
abuse on both sides. If Great Britain desires a 
mark, by which she can know her own subjects, 
let her give them an ear-mark. The colors 
that float from the mast-head should be the 
credentials of our seamen. There is no safety 
to us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in 
the rule that all who sail under the flag (not 
being enemies), are protected by the flag. It is 
impossible that this country should ever aban- 
don the gallant tars who have won for us such 
splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the 
genius of Columbia should visit one of them in 
his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile 
him to his forlorn and wretched condition. 
She would say to him, in the language of gentle- 
men on the other side : " Great Britain intends 
you no harm ; she did not mean to impress 
you, but one of her own subjects ; having taken 
you by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to 
prevail upon her, by peaceable means, to release 
you ; but I cannot, my son, fight for you." If 



ON THE WAR OF i3i2. 1/9 

he did not consider this mere mockery, the 
poor tar would address her judgment and say: 
" You owe me, my country, protection ; I owe 
you, in return, obedience. I am no British 
subject ; I am a native of old Massachusetts, 
where lived my aged father, my wife, my chil- 
dren. I have faithfully discharged my duty. 
Will you refuse to do yours?" Appealing to 
her passions, he would continue : " I lost this 
eye in fighting under Truxton, with the Insur- 
gente ; I got this scar before Tripoli ; I broke 
this leg on board the Constitution, when the 
Guerriire struck." * * * I will not imagine 
the dreadful catastrophe to which he would be 
driven by an abandonment of him to his op- 
pressor. It will not be, it cannot be, that his 
country will refuse him protection. * * * 

An honorable peace is attainable only by an 
efficient war. My plan would be to call out 
the ample resources of the country, give them 
a judicious direction, prosecute the war with 
the utmost vigor, strike wherever we can reach 
the enemy, at sea or on land, and negotiate the 
terms of a peace at Quebec or at Halifax. We 
are told that England is a proud and lofty 
nation, which, disdaining to wait for danger, 
meets it half way. Haughty as she is we 



l8o HENRY CLAY. 

triumphed over her once, and, if we do not 
listen to the counsels of timidity and despair, 
we shall again prevail. In such a cause, with 
the aid of Providence, we must come out 
crowned with success ; but, if we fail, let us 
fail like men, lash ourselves to our gallant 
tars, and expire together in one common 
struggle, fighting for FREE TRADE AND sea- 
men's RIGHTS. 



IV. 
THE RISE OF NATIONALITY. 



IV. 
THE RISE OF NATIONALITY. 

In spite of execrable financial management, 
of the criminal blunders of political army offi- 
cers, and of consequent defeats on land, and 
quite apart from brilliant sea-fights and the 
New Orleans victory, the war of 1812 was of 
incalculable benefit to the United States. It 
marks more particularly the point at which the 
already established democracy began to shade 
off into a real nationality. 

The Democratic party began its career as a 
States-rights party. Possession of national 
power had so far modified the practical opera- 
tion of its tenets that it had not hesitated to 
carry out a national policy, and even wage a 
desperate war, in flat opposition to the will of 
one section of the Union, comprising five of its 
most influential States ; and, when the Hartford 
183 



1 84 RISE OF NATIONALITY. 

Convention was suspected of a design to put 
the New England opposition to the war into a 
forcible veto, there were many indications that 
the dominant party was fully prepared to an- 
swer by a forcible materialization of the na- 
tional will. In the North and West, at least, 
the old States-rights formulas never carried a 
real vitality beyond the war of 1812. Men still 
spoke of " sovereign States," and prided them- 
selves on the difference between the " volun- 
tary union of States " and the effete despotisms 
of Europe ; but the ghost of the Hartford Con- 
vention had laid very many more dangerous 
ghosts in the section in which it had appeared. 
The theatre of the war, now filled with com- 
fortable farms and populous cities, was then 
less known than the Territories of Idaho and 
Arizona are in 1884. There were no roads, and 
the transportation of provisions for the troops, 
of guns, ammunition, and stores for the lake 
navies, was one of the most difificult of the 
problems which the National Government was 
called upon to solve. It cannot be said that 



RISE OF NATIONALITY. 1 85 

the solution was successfully reached, for the 
blunders in transportation were among the 
most costly, exasperating, and dangerous of the 
war. But the efforts to reach it provided the 
impulse which soon after resulted in the settle- 
ment of Western New York, the appearance of 
the germs of such flourishing cities as Buffalo, 
Rochester, and Syracuse, the opening up of the 
Southwest Territory, between Tennessee and 
New Orleans, and the rapid admission of the 
new States of Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, and 
Missouri. But the impulse did not stop here. 
The inconveniences and dangers arising from 
the possession of a vast territory with utterly 
inadequate means of communication had been 
brought so plainly to public view by the war 
that the question of communication influenced 
politics in every direction. In New York it 
took shape in the construction of the Erie 
Canal (finished in 1825). In States farther west 
and south, the loaning of the public credit to 
enterprises of the nature of the Erie Canal in- 
creased until the panic of 1837 introduced 



1 86 RISE OF NATIONALITY. 

" repudiation " into American politics. In 
national politics, the necessity of a general sys- 
tem of canals and roads, as a means of military 
defence, was at first admitted by all, even by 
Calhoun, was gradually rejected by the stricter 
constructionists of the Constitution, and finally 
became a tenet of the National Republican 
party, headed by John Quincy Adams and Clay 
(1825-29), and of its greater successor the Whig 
party, headed by Clay. This idea of Internal 
Improvements at national expense, though 
suggested by Gallatin and Clay in 1806-08, 
only became a political question when the war 
had forced it upon public attention ; and it has 
not yet entirely disappeared. 

The maintenance of such a system required 
money, and a high tariff of duties on imports 
was a necessary concomitant to Internal Im- 
provements. The germ of this system was also 
a product of the war of 18 12. Hamilton had 
proposed it twenty years before ; and the first 
American tariff act had declared that its object 
was the encouragement of American manufac- 



RISE OF NATIONALITY. 1 87 

tures. But the system had never been effectively- 
introduced until the war and the blockade had 
forced American manufact-ires into existence. 
Peace brought competition with British manu- 
facturers, and the American manufacturers be- 
gan to call for protection. The tariff of 18 16 
contained the principle of Protection, but only 
carried it into practice far enough to induce the 
manufacturers to rely on the dominant party for 
more of it. This expectation, rather than the 
Federalist opposition to the war, is the ex- 
planation of the immediate and rapid decline 
of the P"ederal party in New England. Con- 
tinued effort brought about the tariff of 1824, 
which was more protective ; the tariff of 1828, 
which was still more protective ; and the tariff 
of 1830, which reduced the protective element 
to a system. 

The two sections, North and South, had 
been very much alike until the war called the 
principle of growth into activity. The slave 
system of labor, which had fallen in the North 
and had survived and been made still more 



IQiS RISE OF NATIONALITY. 

profitable in the South by Whitney's invention 
of the cotton gin in 1793, shut the South off 
from almost all share in the new life. That 
section had a monopoly of the cotton culture, 
and the present profit of slave labor blinded it 
to the ultimate consequences of it. The slave 
was fit for rude agriculture alone; he could not 
be employed in manufactures, or in any labor 
which required intelligence; and the slave- 
owner, while he desired manufactures, did not 
dare to cultivate the necessary intelligence in his 
own slaves. The South could therefore find no 
profit in protection, and yet it could not with 
dignity admit that its slave system precluded it 
from the advantages of protection, or base its 
opposition to protection wholly on economic 
grounds. Its only recourse was the constitu- 
tional ground of the lack of power of Congress 
to pass a protective tariff, and this brought up 
again the question which had evolved the Ken- 
tucky resolutions of 1798-9. Calhoun, with 
pitiless logic, developed them into a scheme of 
constitutional Nullification. Under his lead, 



RISE OF NATIONALITY. 1 89 

South Carolina, in 1832, declared through her 
State Convention that the protective tariff acts 
were no law, nor binding on the State, its offi- 
cers or citizens. President Jackson, while he 
was ready and willing to suppress any such re- 
bellion by force, was not sorry to see his adher- 
ents in Congress make use of it to overthrow 
protection ; and a " compromise tariff," to which 
the protectionists agreed, was passed in 1833. 
It reduced the duties by an annual percentage 
for ten years. The nullifiers claimed this as a 
triumph, and formally repealed the ordinance of 
nullification, as if it had accomplished its ob- 
ject. But, in its real intent, it had failed 
wretchedly. It had asserted State sovereignty 
through the State's proper voice of a conven- 
tion. When the time fixed for the execution 
of the ordinance arrived, Jackson's intention of 
taking the State's sovereignty by the throat had 
become so evident that an unofficial meeting of 
nullifiers suspended the ordinance until the pas- 
sage of the compromise tariff had made it un- 
necessary. For the first time, the force of a 



igO RISE OF NATIONALITY. 

State and the national force had approached 
threateningly near collision, and no State ever 
tried it again. When the tariff of 1842 re-in- 
troduced the principle of protection, no one 
thought of taking the broken weapon of nulli- 
fication from its resting-place ; and secession 
was finally attempted only as a sectional move- 
ment, not as the expression of the will of a 
State, but as a concerted revolution by a num- 
ber of States. It seems certain that nationality 
had attained force enough, even in 1833, to 
have put State sovereignty forever under its 
feet ; and that but for the cohesive sectional 
force of slavery and its interests, the develop- 
ment of nationality would have been undis- 
puted for the future. 

New conditions were increasing the growth 
of the North and West, and their separation 
from the South in national life, even when nul- 
lification was in its death struggle. The acqui- 
sition of Louisiana in 1803 had been followed 
in 1807 by Fulton's invention of the steamboat, 
the most important factor in carrying immigra- 



RISE OF NATIONALITY. I9I 

tion into the new territories and opening them 
up to settlement. But the steamboat could 
not quite bridge over the gap between the Alle- 
ghanies and the Mississippi. Internal improve- 
ments, canals, and improved roads were not 
quite the instrument that was needed. It was 
found at last in the introduction of the railway 
into the United States in 1830-32. This 
proved to be an agent which could solve every 
difificulty except its own. It could bridge over 
every gap ; it could make profit of its own, and 
make profitable that which had before been 
unprofitable. It placed immigrants where the 
steamboat, canal, and road could at last be of 
the highest utility to them ; it developed the 
great West with startling rapidity ; it increased 
the sale of government lands so rapidly that in 
a few years the debt of the United States was 
paid off, and the surplus became, for the first 
time, a source of political embarrassment. In 
a few years further, aided by revolutionary 
troubles in Europe, immigration became a great 
stream, which poured into and altered the con- 



1 92 JilSE OF NA TIONA LI T V. 

ditions of every part of the North and West. 
The stream was altogether nationahzing in its 
nature. The immigrant came to the United 
States, not to a particular State. To him, the 
country was greater than any State ; even that 
of his adoption. Labor conditions excluded 
the South from this element of progress also. 
Not only were the railroads of the South ham- 
pered in every point by the old difificulty of 
slave labor; immigration and free labor 
shunned slave soil as if the plague were there 
prevalent. Year after year the North and West 
became more national in their prejudices and 
modes of thought and action ; while the South 
remained little changed, except by a natural 
reactionary drift toward a more extreme coloni- 
alism. The natural result, in the next period 
was the development of a guast nationality in 
the South itself. 

The introduction of the railway had brought 
its own difficulties, though these were not felt 
severely until after years. In the continent of 
Europe, the governments carefully retained 



RISE OF NATIONALITY. I93 

their powers of eminent domain when the new 
system was introduced. The necessary land 
was loaned to the railways for a term of years, 
at the expiration of which the railway was to 
revert to the State ; and railway troubles were 
non-existent, or comparatively tractable. In 
the United States, as in Great Britain, free 
right of incorporation was supplemented by 
what was really a gift of the power of eminent 
domain. The necessary land became the prop- 
erty of the corporations in fee, and it has been 
found almost equally difficult to revoke the 
gift or to introduce a railway control. 

Democracy took a new and extreme line of 
development under its alliance with nationality. 
As the dominant party, about 1827-8, became 
divided into two parties, the new parties felt 
the democratic influence as neither of their 
predecessors had felt it. Nominations, which 
had been made by cliques of legislators or Con- 
gressmen, began to be made by popular dele- 
gate conventions about 1825. Before 1835, 
national, State, and local conventions had been 



194 ^^SE OF NATIONALITY. 

united into parties of the modern type. With 
them came the pseudo democratic idea of " ro- 
tation in office," introduced into national poll' 
tics by President Jackson, in 1829, and adopted 
by succeeding administrations. There were 
also some attempts to do away with the elec- 
toral system, and to make the federal judiciary 
elective, or to impose on it some other term of 
office than good behavior ; but these had 
neither success nor encouragement. 

The financial errors of the war of 18 12 had 
fairly compelled the re-establishment of the 
Bank of the United States in 1816, with a 
charter for twenty years, and the control of the 
deposits of national revenue. Soon after Jack- 
son's inauguration, the managers of the new 
democratic party came into collision with the 
bank on the appointment of a subordinate 
agent. It very soon became evident that the 
bank could not exist in the new political atmos- 
phere. It was driven into politics ; a new char- 
ter was vetoed in 1832; and after one of the 
bitterest struggles of our history, the bank 



HTSE OF NATIONALITY. 195 

ceased to exist as a government institution in 
1836. The reason for its fall, however dis- 
guised by attendant circumstances, was really 
its lack of harmony with the national-demo- 
cratic environment which had overtaken it. 

The anti-slavery agitation, which began in 
1830, was as evidently a product of the new 
phase of democracy, but will fall more naturally 
under the next period. 

Webster's reply to Hayne has been taken as 
the best illustration of that thoroughly national 
feeling which was impossible before the war of 
18 12, and increasingly more common after it. 
It has been necessary to preface it with Hayne's 
speech, in order to have a clear understanding of 
parts of Webster's ; but it has not been possible 
to omit Calhoun's speech, as a defence of his 
scheme of nullification, and as an exemplifica- 
tion of the reaction toward colonialism with 
which the South met the national development. 
It has not seemed necessary to include ex- 
amples of the orations called forth by the tem- 
porary political issues of the time. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN, 

OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 

(born 1782, DIED 1850.) 



ON NULLIFICATION AND THE FORCE BILL, IN THE 
UNITED STATES SENATE, FEB. 15, 1833. 

Mr. President : 

At the last session of Congress, it was avowed 
on all sides that the public debt, as to all prac- 
tical purposes, was in fact paid, the small sur- 
plus remaining being nearly covered by the 
money in the Treasury and the bonds for 
duties which had already accrued ; but with 
the arrival of this event our last hope was 
doomed to be disappointed. After a long 
session of many months, and the most earnest 
effort on the part of South Carolina and the 
other Southern States to obtain relief, all that 
could be effected was a small reduction in the 
amount of the duties, but a reduction of such 
a character that, while it diminished the 

ig6 



NULLIFICA TION. 19/ 

amount of burden, it distributed that burden 
more unequally than even the obnoxious act of 
1828 ; reversing the principle adopted by the 
bill of 1 8 16, of laying higher duties on the un- 
protected than the protected articles, by re- 
pealing almost entirely the duties laid upon the 
former, and imposing the burden almost en- 
tirely on the latter. It was thus that, instead 
of relief — instead of an equal distribution of 
burdens and benefits of the government, on 
the payment of the debt, as had been fondly 
anticipated, — the duties were so arranged as to 
be, in fact, bounties on one side and taxation 
on the other ; thus placing the two great sec- 
tions of the country in direct conflict in refer- 
ence to its fiscal action, and thereby letting in 
that flood of political corruption which threat- 
ens to sweep away our Constitution and our 
liberty. 

This unequal and unjust arrangement was 
pronounced, both by the administration, 
through its proper organ, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, and by the opposition, to be a per- 
manent adjustment ; and it was thus that all 
hope of relief through the action of the Gene- 
ral Government terminated ; and the crisis so 
long apprehended at length arrived, at which 



198 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

the State was compelled to choose between 
absolute acquiescence in a ruinous system of 
oppression, or a resort to her reserved powers — 
powers of which she alone was the rightful 
judge, and which only, in this momentous 
juncture, could save her. She determined on 
the latter. 

The consent of two thirds of her Legislature 
was necessary for the call of a convention, which 
was considered the only legitimate organ 
through which the people, in their sovereignty, 
could speak. After an arduous struggle the 
States-right party succeeded ; more than two 
thirds of both branches of the Legislature 
favorable to a convention were elected ; a con- 
vention was called — the ordinance adopted. 
The convention was succeeded by a meeting of 
the Legislature, when the laws to carry the 
ordinance into execution were enacted — all of 
which have been communicated by the Presi- 
dent, have been referred to the Committee on 
the Judiciary, and this bill is the result of their 
labor. 

Having now corrected some of the prominent 
misrepresentations as to the nature of this con- 
troversy, and given a rapid sketch of the move- 
ment of the State in reference to it, I will 



^ 



NULLIFICATION. 1 99 

next proceed to notice some objections con- 
nected with the ordinance and the proceedings 
under it. 

The first and most prominent of these is 
directed against what is called the test oath, 
which an effort has been made to render odious. 
So far from deserving the denunciation that 
has been levelled against it, I view this pro- 
vision of the ordinance as but the natural result 
of the doctrines entertained by the State, an^ 
the position which she occupies. The people 
of Carolina believe that the Union is a union 
of States, and not of individuals ; that it was 
formed by the States, and that the citizens of 
the several States were bound to it through the 
acts of their several States ; that each State 
ratified the Constitution for itself, and that it 
was only by such ratification of a State that 
any obligation was imposed upon its citizens. 
Thus believing, it is the opinion of the people 
of Carolina that it belongs to the State which 
has imposed, the obligation to declare, in the 
last resort, the extent of this obligation, as far 
as her citizens are concerned ; and this upon 
the plain principles which exist in all analogous 
cases of compact between sovereign bodies. 
On this principle the people of the State, act- 



200 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

ing in their sovereign capacity in convention, 
precisely as they did in the adoption of their 
own and the Federal Constitution, have de- 
clared, by the ordinance, that the acts of Con- 
gress which imposed duties under the authority 
to lay imposts, were acts not for revenue, as in- 
tended by the Constitution, but for protection, 
and therefore null and void. The ordinance 
thus enacted by the people of the State them- 
selves, acting as a sovereign community, is as 
obligatory on the citizens of the State as any 
portion of the Constitution. In prescribing, 
then, the oath to obey the ordinance, no more 
was done than to prescribe an oath to obey the 
Constitution. It is, in fact, but a particular 
oath of allegiance, and in every respect similar 
to that which is prescribed, under the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, to be administered 
to all the officers of the State and Federal 
Governments; and is no more deserving the 
harsh and bitter epithets which have been 
heaped upon it than that or any similar oath. 
It ought to be borne in mind that, according 
to the opinion which prevails in Carolina, the 
ricfht of resistance to the unconstitutional acts 
of Congress belongs to the State, and not to 
her individual citizens ; and that, though the 



NULLIFICA TION. 201 

latter may, in a mere question of meiim and 
tuum, resist through the courts an unconstitu- 
tional encroachment upon their rights, yet the 
final stand against usurpation rests not with 
them, but with the State of which they are 
members ; and such act of resistance by a State 
binds the conscience and allegiance of the citi- 
zen. But there appears to be a general misap- 
prehension as to the extent to which the State 
has acted under this part of the ordinance. 
Instead of sweeping every ofificer by a general 
proscription of the minority, as has been repre- 
sented in debate, as far as my knowledge ex- 
tends, not a single individual has been removed. 
The State has, in fact, acted with the greatest 
tenderness, all circumstances considered, toward 
citizens who differed from the majority ; and, 
in that spirit, has directed the oath to be ad- 
ministered only in the case of some ofificial act 
directed to be performed in which obedience to 
the ordinance is involved. * * * 

It is next objected that the enforcing acts 
have legislated the United States out of South 
Carolina. I have already replied to this objec- 
tion on another occasion, and will now but re- 
peat what I then said : that they have been 
legislated out only to the extent that they had 



202 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

no fight to enter. The Constitution has ad- 
mitted the jurisdiction of the United States 
within the limits of the several States only so 
far as the delegated powers authorize ; beyond 
that they are intruders, and may rightfully be 
expelled ; and that they have been efificiently 
expelled by the legislation of the State through 
her civil process, as has been acknowledged on 
all sides in the debate, is only a confirmation of 
the truth of the doctrine for which the majority 
in Carolina have contended. 

The very point at issue between the two 
parties there is, whether nullification is a peace- 
ful and an eflficient remedy against an unconsti- 
tutional act of the General Government, and 
may be asserted, as such, through the State 
tribunals. Both parties agree that the acts 
against which it is directed are unconstitutional 
and oppressive. The controversy is only as to 
the means by which our citizens may be pro- 
tected against the acknowledged encroachments 
on their rights. This being the point at issue 
between the parties, and the very object of the 
majority being an efficient protection of the 
citizens through the State tribunals, the meas- 
ures adopted to enforce the ordinance, of course 
received the most decisive character. We were 



NULLIFTCA TION. 203 

not children, to act by halves. Yet for acting 
thus efficiently the State is denounced, and this 
bill reported, to overrule, by military force, the 
civil tribunal and civil process of the State ! 
Sir, I consider this bill, and the arguments 
which have been urged on this floor in its sup- 
port, as the most triumphant acknowledgment 
that nullification is peaceful and efficient, and 
so deeply intrenched in the principles of our sys- 
tem, that it cannot be assailed but by pros- 
trating the Constitution, and substituting the 
supremacy of military force in lieu of the 
supremacy of the laws. In fact, the advocates 
of this bill refute their own argument. They 
tell us that the ordinance is unconstitutional ; 
that it infracts the constitution of South Caro- 
lina, although, to me, the objection appears ab- 
surd, as it was adopted by the very authority 
which adopted the constitution itself. They 
also tell us that the Supreme Court is the ap- 
pointed arbiter of all controversies between a 
State and the General Government. Why, 
then, do they not leave this controversy to that 
tribunal? Why do they not confide to them 
the abrogation of the ordinance, and the laws 
made in pursuance of it, and the assertion of 
that supremacy which they claim for the^laws 



204 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

of Congress? The State stands pledged to 
resist no process of the court. Why, then, con- 
fer on the President the extensive and unlimited 
powers provided in this bill ? Why authorize 
him to use military force to arrest the civil pro- 
cess of the State ? But one answer can be 
given : That, in a contest between the State and 
the General Government, if the resistance be 
limited on both sides to the civil process, the 
State, by its inherent sovereignty, standing 
upon its reserved powers, will prove too power- 
ful in such a controversy, and must triumph 
over the Federal Government, sustained by its 
delegated and limited authority ; and in this 
answer we have an acknowledgment of the 
truth of those great principles for which the 
State has so firmly and nobly contended. * * * 
Notwithstanding all that has been said, I 
may say that neither the Senator from Dela- 
ware (Mr. Clayton), nor any other who has 
spoken on the same side, has directly and fairly 
met the great question at issue: Is this a Fed- 
eral Union ? a union of States, as distinct from 
that of individuals ? Is the sovereignty in the 
several States, or in the American people in 
the aggregate? The very language which we 
are compelled to use when speaking of our 



NULLIFICA TION. 205 

political institutions, affords proof conclusive as 
to its real character. The terms union, federal, 
united, all imply a combination of sovereign- 
ties, a confederation of States. They never 
apply to an association of individuals. Who 
ever heard of the United State of New 
York, of Massachusetts, or of Virginia ? 
Who ever heard the term federal or union 
applied to the aggregation of individuals 
into one community? Nor is the other 
point less clear — that the sovereignty is in 
the several States, and that our system is a 
union of twenty-four sovereign powers, under a 
constitutional compact, and not of a divided 
sovereignty between the States severally and 
the United States? In spite of all that has 
been said, I maintain that sovereignty is in its 
nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in 
a State, and we might just as well speak of half 
a square, or half of a triangle, as of half a sov- 
ereignty. It is a gross error to confound the 
exercise of sovereign powers with sovereignty 
itself, or the delegation of such powers with 
the surrender of them. A sovereign may dele- 
gate his powers to be exercised by as many 
agents as he may think proper, under such con- 
ditions and with such limitations as he may im- 



206 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

pose ; but to surrender any portion of his sov- 
ereignty to another is to annihilate the whole. 
The Senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton) calls 
this metaphysical reasoning, which he says he 
cannot comprehend. If by metaphysics he 
means that scholastic refinement which makes 
distinctions without difference, no one can hold 
it in more utter contempt than I do ; but if, on 
the contrary, he means the power of analysis 
and combination — that power which reduces the 
most complex idea into its elements, which 
traces causes to their first principle, and, by 
the power of generalization and combination, 
unites the whole in one harmonious system — 
then, so far from deserving contempt, it is the 
highest attribute of the human mind. It is the 
power which raises man above the brute — 
which distinguishes his faculties from mere sa- 
gacity, which he holds in common with inferior 
animals. It is this power which has raised the 
astronomer from being a mere gazer at the 
stars to the high intellectual eminence of a New- 
ton or a Laplace, and astronomy itself from a 
mere observation of insulated facts into that 
noble science which displays to our admiration 
the system of the universe. And shall this 
high power of the mind, which has effected 



NULLIFICA TION. 20/ 

such wonders when directed to the laws which 
control the material world, be forever prohib- 
ited, under a senseless cry of metaphysics, 
from being applied to the high purposes of po- 
litical science and legislation ? I hold them to 
be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and 
to be as fit a subject for the application of the 
highest intellectual power. Denunciation may, 
indeed fall upon the philosophical inquirer into 
these first principles, as it did upon Galileo and 
Bacon, when they first unfolded the great dis- 
coveries which have immortahzed their names ; 
but the time will come when truth will prevail 
in spite of prejudice and denunciation, and 
when politics and legislation will be considered 
as much a science as astronomy and chemistry. 
In connection with this part of the subject, I 
understood the Senator from Virginia (Mr. 
Rives) to say that sovereignty was divided, and 
that a portion remained with the States sev- 
erally, and that the residue was vested in the 
Union. By Union, I suppose the Senator 
meant the United States. If such be his 
meaning — if he intended to affirm that the 
sovereignty was in the twenty-four States, in 
whatever light he may view them, our opinions 
will not disagree ; but according to my con- 



208 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

ception, the whole sovereignty is in the several 
States, while the exercise of sovereign power is 
divided — a part being exercised under com- 
pact, through this General Government, and 
the residue through the separate State Govern- 
ments. But if the Senator from Virginia (Mr. 
Rives) means to assert that the twenty-four 
States form but one community, with a single 
sovereign power as to the objects of the Union, 
it will be but the revival of the old question, of 
whether the Union is a union between States, 
as distinct communities, or a mere aggregate of 
the American people, as a mass of individuals ; 
and in this light his opinions would lead directly 
to consolidation. * * * 

Disguise it as you may, the controversy is 
one between power and liberty ; and I tell the 
gentlemen who are opposed to me, that, as 
strong as may be the love of power on their 
side, the love of liberty is still stronger on ours. 
History furnishes many instances of similar 
struggles, where the love of liberty has pre- 
vailed against power under every disadvantage, 
and among them few more striking than that of 
our own Revolution ; where, as strong as was 
the parent country, and feeble as were the col- 
onies, yet, under the impulse of liberty, and the 



NULLIFICA TION. 209 

blessing of God, they gloriously triumphed in 
the contest. There are, indeed, many striking 
analogies between that and the present con- 
troversy. They both originated substantially 
in the same cause — with this difference — in the 
present case, the power of taxation is converted 
into that of regulating industry; in the other 
the power of regulating industry, by the regu- 
lation of commerce, was attempted to be con- 
verted into the power of taxation. Were I to 
trace the analogy further, we should find that 
the perversion of the taxing power, in the one 
case, has given precisely the same control to 
the Northern section over the industry of the 
Southern section of the Union, which the 
power to regulate commerce gave to Great 
Britain over the industry of the colonies in the 
other; and that the very articles in which the 
colonies were permitted to have a free trade, 
and those in which the mother-country had a 
monopoly, are almost identically the same as 
those in which the Southern States are permit- 
ted to have a free trade by the act of 1832, and 
in which the Northern States have, by the same 
act, secured a monopoly. The only difference 
is in the means. In the former, the colonies 
were permitted to have a free trade with all 



2IO JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

countries south of Cape Finisterre, a cape in 
the northern part of Spain ; while north of that, 
the trade of the colonies was prohibited, except 
through the mother-country, by means of her 
commercial regulations. If we compare the 
products of the country north and south of 
Cape Finisterre, we shall find them almost iden- 
tical with the list of the protected and unpro- 
tected articles contained in the list of last year. 
Nor does the analogy terminate here. The 
very arguments resorted to at the commence- 
ment of the American Revolution, and the 
measures adopted, and the motives assigned to 
bring on that contest (to enforce the law), are 
almost identically the same. 

But to return from this digression to the con- 
sideration of the bill. Whatever difference of 
opinion may exist upon other points, there is 
one on which I should suppose there can be 
none ; that this bill rests upon principles which, 
if carried out, will ride over State sovereignties, 
and that it will be idle for any advocates here- 
after to talk of State rights. The Senator from 
Virginia (Mr. Rives) says that he is the advo- 
cate of State rights ; but he must permit me to 
tell him that, although he may differ in premises 
from the other gentlemen with whom he acts 



NULLIFICA TION. 2 1 1 

on this occasion, yet, in supporting this bill, he 
obliterates every vestige of distinction between 
him and. them, saving only that, professing the 
principles of '98, his example will be more per- 
nicious than that of the most open and bitter 
opponent of the rights of the States. I will 
also add, what I am compelled to say, that I 
must consider him (Mr. Rives) as less consis- 
tent than our old opponents, whose conclusions 
were fairly drawn from their premises, while his 
premises ought to have led him to opposite 
conclusions. The gentleman has told us that 
the new-fangled doctrines, as he chooses to call 
them, have brought State rights into disrepute. 
I must tell him, in reply, that what he calls 
new-fangled are but the doctrines of '98 ; and 
that it is he (Mr. Rives), and others with him, 
who, professing these doctrines, have degraded 
them by explaining away their meaning and 
efficacy. He (Mr. R.) has disclaimed, in be- 
half of Virginia, the authorship of nullification. 
I will not dispute that point. If Virginia 
chooses to throw away one of her brightest or- 
naments, she must not hereafter complain that 
it has become the property of another. But 
while I have, as a representative of Carolina, no 
right to complain of the disavowal of the Sena- 



212 JOHN C. CALHOUM. 

tor from Virginia, I must believe that he (Mr. 
R.) has done his native State great injustice by- 
declaring on this floor, that when she gravely 
resolved, in '98, that " in cases of deliberate and 
dangerous infractions of the Constitution, the 
States, as parties to the compact, have the 
right, and are in duty bound, to interpose to 
arrest the progress of the evil, and to maintain 
within their respective limits the authorities, 
rights, and liberties appertaining to them," she 
meant no more than to proclaim the right to 
protest and to remonstrate. To suppose that, 
in putting forth so solemn a declaration, which 
she afterward sustained by so able and elaborate 
an argument, she meant no more than to assert 
what- no one had ever denied, would be to sup- 
pose that the State had been guilty of the most 
egregious trifling that ever was exhibited on 
so solemn an occasion. 



ROBERT Y. HAYNE, 

OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 

(born 179I, DIED 1839.) 



ON MR. foot's resolution IN THE UNITED STATES 
SENATE, JAN. 21, 1830. 

Mr. Speaker : 

Mr. Hayne said, when he took occasion, two 
days ago, to throw out some ideas with respect 
to the policy of the government in relation to 
the public lands, nothing certainly could have 
been further from his thoughts than that he 
should have been compelled again to throw him- 
self upon the indulgence of the Senate. Little 
did I expect, said Mr. H., to be called upon to 
meet such an argument as was yesterday urged 
by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Webster). Sir, I question no man's opinions; 
I impeach no man's motives ; I charged no 
party, or State, or section of country with hos- 
tility to any other, but ventured, as I thought, 
213 



214 ROBERT V. HAYNE. 

in a becoming spirit, to put forth my own sen- 
timents in relation to a great national question 
of public policy. Such was my course. The 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Benton), it is 
true, had charged upon the Eastern States an 
early and continued hostility toward the West, 
and referred to a number of historical facts and 
documents in support of that charge. Now, 
sir, how have these different arguments been 
met ? The honorable gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts, after deliberating a whole night upon 
his course, comes into this chamber to vindicate 
New England ; and instead of making up his 
issue with the gentleman from Missouri, on the 
charges which lie had preferred, chooses to con- 
sider me as the author of those charges, and 
losing sight entirely of that gentleman, selects 
me as his adversary, and pours out all the vials 
of his mighty wrath upon my devoted head. 
Nor is he willing to stop there. He goes on to 
assail the institutions and policy of the South, 
and calls in question the principles and conduct 
of the State which I have the honor to repre- 
sent. When I find a gentleman of mature age 
and experience, of acknowledged talents and 
profound sagacity, pursuing a course like this, 
declining the contest offered from the West, 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 21 5 

and making war upon the unoffending South, I 
must beheve, I am bound to believe, he has 
some object in view which he has not ventured 
to disclose, Mr. President, why is this? Has 
the gentleman discovered in former controver- 
sies with the gentleman from Missouri, that he 
is overmatched by that senator ? And does he 
hope for an easy victory over a more feeble ad- 
versary? Has the gentleman's distempered 
fancy been disturbed by gloomy forebodings of 
" new alliances to be formed," at which he 
hinted ? Has the ghost of the murdered co- 
alition come back, like the ghost of Banquo, to 
" sear the eyeballs " of the gentleman, and will 
not down at his bidding? Are dark visions of 
broken hopes, and honors lost forever, still 
floating before his heated imagination ? Sir, if 
it be his object to thrust me between the gen- 
tleman from Missouri and himself, in order to 
rescue the East from the contest it has provoked 
with the West, he shall not be gratified. Sir, 
I will not be dragged into the defence of my 
friend from Missouri. The South shall not be 
forced into a conflict not its own. The gentle- 
man from Missouri is able to fight his own bat- 
tles. The gallant West needs no aid from the 
South to repel any attack which may be made 



2l6 ROBERT V. HAYNE. 

upon them from any quarter. Let the gentle- 
man from Massachusetts controvert the facts 
and arguments of the gentleman from Missouri, 
if he can — and if he win the victory, let him 
wear the honors ; I shall not deprive him of his 
laurels. * * * 

Sir, any one acquainted with the history of 
parties in this country will recognize in the 
points now in dispute between the Senator from 
Massachusetts and myself the very grounds 
which have, from the beginning, divided the 
two great parties in this country, and which 
(call these parties by what names you will, and 
amalgamate them as you may) will divide them 
forever. The true distinction between those 
parties is laid down in a celebrated manifesto 
issued by the convention of the Federalists of 
Massachusetts, assembled in Boston, in Febru- 
ary, 1824, on the occasion of organizing a party 
opposition to the re-election of Governor Eustis. 
The gentleman will recognize this as " the ca- 
nonical book of political scripture " ; and it in- 
structs us that, when the American colonies re- 
deemed themselves from British bondage, and 
became so many independent nations, they pro- 
posed to form a National Union (not a 
Federal Union, sir, but a NATIONAL Union). 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 21 7 

Those who were in favor of a union of the 
States in this form became known by the name 
of Federalists ; those who wanted no union of the 
States, or disliked the proposed form of union, 
became known by the name of Anti-Federalists. 
By means which need not be enumerated, the 
Anti-Federalists became (after the expiration 
of twelve years) our national rulers, and for a 
period of sixteen years, until the close of Mr. 
Madison's administration in 181 7, continued to 
exercise the exclusive direction of our public 
affairs. Here, sir, is the true history of the 
origin, rise, and progress of the party of Na- 
tional Republicans, who date back to the very 
origin of the Government, and who then, as 
now, chose to consider the Constitution as 
having created not a Federal, but a National, 
Union; who regarded "consolidation" as no 
evil, and who doubtless consider it " a consum- 
mation to be wished " to build up a great 
"central government," "one and indivisible." 
Sir, there have existed, in every age and every 
country, two distinct orders of men — the lovers 
of freedom and the devoted advocates of power. 
The same great leading principles, modified 
only by the peculiarities of manners, habits, 
and institutions, divided parties in the ancient 

1^ 



2l8 ROBERT Y. HAYNE. 

republics, animated the Whigs and Tories of 
Great Britain, distinguished in our own times 
the Liberals and Ultras of France, and may be 
traced even in the bloody struggles of unhappy 
Spain. Sir, when the gallant Riego, who de- 
voted himself and all that he possessed to the 
liberties of his country, was dragged to the 
scaffold, followed by the tears and lamentations 
of every lover of freedom throughout the world, 
he perished amid the deafening cries of " Long 
live the absolute king ! " The people whom I 
represent, Mr. President, are the descendants of 
those who brought with them to this country, 
as the most precious of their possessions, " an 
ardent love of liberty " ; and while that shall 
be preserved, they will always be found man- 
fully struggling against tho. consolidation of the 
Government AS THE WORST OF evils. * * * 
Who, then, Mr. President, are the true friends 
of the Union ? Those who would confine the 
Federal Government strictly within the limits 
prescribed by the Constitution ; who would pre- 
serve to the States and the people all powers 
not expressly delegated ; who would make this 
a Federal and not a National Union, and who, 
administering the Government in a spirit of 
equal justice, would make it a blessing, and not 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 219 

a curse. And who are its enemies ? Those 
who are in favor of consolidation ; who are 
constantly stealing power from the States, and 
adding strength to the Federal Government ; 
who, assuming an unwarrantable jurisdiction 
over the States and the people, undertake to 
regulate the whole industry and capital of the 
country. But, sir, of all descriptions of men, I 
consider those as the worst enemies of the 
Union, who sacrifice the equal rights which 
belong to every member of the confederacy to 
combinations of interested majorities for per- 
sonal or political objects. But the gentleman 
apprehends no evil from the dependence of the 
States on the Federal Government ; he can see 
no danger of corruption from the influence of 
money or patronage. Sir, I know that it is 
supposed to be a wise saying that " patronage 
is a source of weakness " ; and in support of 
that maxim it has been said that " every ten 
appointments make a hundred enemies." But 
I am rather inclined to think, with the eloquent 
and sagacious orater now reposing-on his laurels 
on the banks of the Roanoke, that " the power 
of conferring favors creates a crowd of depend- 
ents " ; he gave a forcible illustration of the 
truth of the remark, when he told us of the 



220 ROBERT Y. HA YNE. 

effect of holding up the savory morsel to the 
eager eyes of the hungry hounds gathered 
around his door. It mattered not whether the 
gift was bestowed on " Towzer " or " Sweetlips," 
" Tray," " Blanche," or '' Sweetheart " ; while 
held in suspense, they were all governed by a 
nod, and when the morsel was bestowed, the 
expectation of the favors of to-morrow kept up 
the subjection of to-day. 

The Senator from Massachusetts, in denounc- 
ing what he is pleased to call the Carolina doc- 
trine, has attempted to throw ridicule upon the 
idea that a State has any constitutional remedy 
by the exercise of its sovereign authority, against 
" a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of 
the Constitution." He calls it " an idle " or " a 
ridiculous notion," or something to that effect, 
and added, that it would make the Union a 
" mere rope of sand." Now, sir, as the gentle- 
man has not condescended to enter into any ex- 
amination of the question, and has been satis- 
fied with throwing the weight of his authority 
into the scale, I do not deem it necessary to do 
more than to throw into the opposite scale the 
authority on which South Carolina relies; and 
there, for the present, I am perfectly willing to 
leave the controversy. The South Carolina 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 221 

doctrine, that is to say, the doctrine contained 
in an exposition reported by a committee of the 
Legislature in December, 1828, and published 
by their authority, is the good old Republican 
doctrine of '98 — the doctrine of the celebrated 
" Virginia Resolutions " of that year, and of 
" Madison's Report " of '99. It will be recol- 
lected that the Legislature of Virginia, in 
December, '98, took into consideration the alien 
and sedition laws, then considered by all Re- 
publicans as a gross violation of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, and on that day 
passed, among others, the following resolu- 
tion : — 

" The General Assembly doth explicitly and 
peremptorily declare, that it views the powers 
of the Federal Government, as resulting from 
the compact to which the States are parties, as 
limited by the plain sense and intention of the 
instrument constituting that compact, as no 
further valid than they are authorized by the 
grants enumerated in that compact ; and that 
in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous 
exercise of other powers not granted by the said 
compact, the States who are the parties there- 
to have the right, and are in duty bound, to in- 
terpose for arresting the progress of the evil, 



222 ROBERT Y. HAYNE, 

and for maintaining within their respective 
limits the authorities, rights, and hberties apper- 
taining to them." 

In addition to the above resolution, the 
General Assembly of Virginia " appealed to the 
other States, in the confidence that they would 
concur with that commonwealth, that the acts 
aforesaid (the alien and sedition laws) are un- 
constitutional, and that the necessary and proper 
measures would be taken by each for cooperating 
with Virginia in maintaining unimpaired the 
authorities, rights, and liberties reserved to the 
States respectively, or to the people." * * * 

But, sir, our authorities do not stop here. 
The State of Kentucky responded to Virginia, 
and on the loth of November, 1798, adopted 
those celebrated resolutions, well known to 
have been penned by the author of the Decla- 
ration of American Independence. In those 
resolutions, the Legislature of Kentucky declare, 
"that the government created by this compact 
was not made the exclusive or final judge of the 
extent of the power delegated to itself, since 
that would have made its discretion, and not 
the Constitution, the measure of its powers ; 
but that, as in all other cases of compact among 
parties having no common judge, each party has 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 223 

an equal right to judge for itself as well of in- 
fractions as of the mode and measure of re- 
dress." * * * 

Sir, at that day the whole country was divid- 
ed on this very question. It formed the line 
of demarcation between the federal and re- 
publican parties ; and the great political revo- 
lution which then took place turned upon the 
very questions involved in these resolutions. 
That question was decided by the people, and 
by that decision the Constitution was, in the 
emphatic language of Mr. Jefferson, " saved at 
its last gasp." I should suppose, sir, it would 
require more self-respect than any gentleman 
here would be willing to assume, to treat lightly 
doctrines derived from such high sources. 
Resting on authority like this, I will ask, gentle- 
men, whether South Carolina has not manifested 
a high regard for the Union, when, under a 
tyranny ten times more grievous than the alien 
and sedition laws, she has hitherto gone no 
further than to petition, remonstrate, and to 
solemnly protest against a series of measures 
which she believes to be wholly unconstitu- 
tional and utterly destructive of her interests. 
Sir, South Carolina has not gone one step fur- 
ther than Mr. Jefferson himself was disposed to 



224 ROBERT V. HAYNE. 

go, in relation to the present subject of our 
present complaints — not a step further than the 
statesmen from New England were disposed to 
go under similar circumstances ; no further 
than the Senator from Massachusetts himself 
once considered as within " the limits of a con- 
stitutional opposition." The doctrine that it is 
the right of a State to judge of the violations 
of the Constitution on the part of the Federal 
Government, and to protect her citizens from 
the operations of unconstitional laws, was held 
by the enlightened citizens of Boston, who as- 
sembled in Faneuil Hall, on the 25th of January, 
1809. They state, in that celebrated memorial, 
that " they looked only to the State Legisla- 
ture, which was competent to devise relief 
against the unconstitutional acts of the Gene- 
ral Government. That your power (say they) 
is adequate to that object, is evident from the 
organization of the confederacy." * * * 

Thus it will be seen, Mr. President, that the 
South Carolina doctrine is the Republican 
doctrine of '98, — that it was promulgated by 
the fathers of the faith, — that it was main- 
tained by Virginia and Kentucky in the worst 
of times, — that it constituted the very pivot 
on which the political revolution of that day 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 225 

turned, — that it embraces the very principles, 
the triumph of which, at that time, saved the 
Constitution at its last gasp, and which New 
England statesmen were not unwilling to adopt 
when they believed themselves to be the vic- 
tims of unconstitutional legislation. Sir, as to 
the doctrine that the Federal Government is the 
exclusive judge of the extent as well as the 
limitations of its power, it seems to me to be 
utterly subversive of the sovereignty and in- 
dependence of the States. It makes but little 
difference, in my estimation, whether Congress 
or the Supreme Court are invested with this 
power. If the Federal Government, in all, or 
any, of its departments, is to prescribe the 
limits of its own authority, and the States are 
bound to submit to the decision, and are not to 
be allowed to examine and decide for them- 
selves when the barriers of the Constitution 
shall be overleaped, this is practically " a 
government without limitation of powers." 
The States are at once reduced to mere petty 
corporations, and the people are entirely at 
your mercy. I have but one word more to 
add. In all the efforts that have been made by 
South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional 
laws which Congress has extended over them, 



226 ROBERT V. HAYNE. 

she has kept steadily in view the preservation 
of the Union, by the only means by which she 
believes it can be long preserved — a firm, 
manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. 
The measures of the Federal Government have, 
it is true, prostrated her interests, and will soon 
involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. 
But even this evil, great as it is, is not the 
chief ground of our complaints. It is the prin- 
ciple involved in the contest — a principle which, 
substituting the discretion of Congress for the 
limitations of the Constitution, brings the States 
and the people to the feet of the Federal 
Government, and leaves them nothing they can 
call their own. Sir, if the measures of the 
Federal Government were less oppressive, we 
should still strive against this usurpation. The 
South is acting on a principle she has always 
held sacred — resistance to unauthorized taxa- 
tion. These, sir, are the principles which in- 
duced the immortal Hampden to resist the 
payment of a tax of twenty shillings. Would 
twenty shillings have ruined his fortune ? No ! 
but the payment of half of twenty shillings, on 
the principle on which it was demanded, would 
have made him a slave. Sir, if acting on these 
high motives — if animated by that ardent love 



ON MR. FOOT'S RESOLUTION. 22/ 

of liberty which has always been the most 
prominent trait in the Southern character, we 
would be hurried beyond the bounds of a cold 
and calculating prudence ; who is there, with one 
noble and generous sentiment in his bosom, 
who would not be disposed, in the language of 
Burke, to exclaim, " You must pardon some- 
thing to the spirit of liberty ? " 



DANIEL WEBSTER, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(born 1782, DIED 1852.) 



IN REPLY TO HAYNE, IN THE UNITED STATES 
SENATE, JANUARY 26, 1830. 

Mr. President : 

When the mariner has been tossed for many 
days in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, 
he naturally avails himself of the first pause in 
the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take 
his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements 
have driven him from his true course. Let 
us imitate this prudence, and before we float 
further on the waves of this debate, refer to the 
point from which we departed, that we may at 
least be able to conjecture where we now are. 
I ask for the reading of the resolution before 
the Senate. 

The Secretary read the resolution, as follows : 

Resolved, That the Committee on Public Lands 
228 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 229 

be instructed to inquire and report the quantity of 
public land remaining unsold within each State and 
Territory, and whether it be expedient to limit for 
a certain period the sales of the public lands to 
such lands only as have heretofore been offered for 
sale, and are now subject to entry at the minimum 
price. And, also, whether the office of Surveyor- 
General, and some of the land offices, may not be 
abolished without detriment to the public interest ; 
or whether it be expedient to adopt measures to 
hasten the sales and extend more rapidly the sur- 
veys of the public lands. 

We have thus heard, sir, what the resolu- 
tion is which is actually before us for consid- 
eration ; and it will readily occur to everyone, 
that it is almost the only subject about which 
something has not been said in the speech, 
running through two days, by which the Senate 
has been entertained by the gentleman from 
South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range 
of our public affairs, whether past or present — 
every thing, general or local, whether belonging 
to national politics or party politics — seems to 
have attracted more or less of the honorable 
member's attention, save only the resolution 
before the Senate. He has spoken of every 
thing but the public lands ; they have escaped 



230 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

his notice. To that subject, in all his excur- 
sions, he has not paid even the cold respect of 
a passing glance. 

When this debate, sir, was to be resumed, on 
Thursday morning, it so happened that it 
would have been convenient for me to be else- 
where. The honorable member, however, did 
not incline to put off the discussion to another 
day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and 
he wished to discharge it. That shot, sir, which 
he thus kindly informed us was coming, that 
we might stand out of the way, or prepare our- 
selves to fall by it and die with decency, has 
now been received. Under all advantages, and 
with expectation awakened by the tone which 
preceded it, it has been discharged, and has 
spent its force. It may become me to say no 
more of its effect, than that, if nobody is found, 
after all, either killed or wounded, it is not the 
first time in the history of human affairs, that 
the vigor and success of the war have not quite 
come up to the lofty and sounding phrase of 
the manifesto. 

The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone 
the debate, told the Senate, with the emphasis 
of his hand upon his heart, that there was 
something rankling Jure, which he wished to 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 231 

relieve. (Mr. Hayne rose, and disclaimed 
having used the word rankling^ It would not, 
Mr. President, be safe for the honorable mem- 
ber to appeal to those around him, upon the 
question whether he did in fact make use of 
that word. But he may have been unconscious 
of it. At any rate, it is enough that he dis- 
claims it. But still, with or without the use of 
that particular word, he had yet something 
here, he said, of which he wished to rid himself 
by an immediate reply. In this respect, sir, I 
have a great advantage over the honorable 
gentleman. There is nothing here, sir, which 
gives me the slightest uneasiness ; neither fear, 
nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more 
troublesome than either, the consciousness of 
having been in the wrong. There is nothing, 
either originating here, or now received here by 
the gentleman's shot. Nothing originating 
here, for I had not the slightest feeling of un- 
kindness toward the honorable member. Some 
passages, it is true, had occurred since our 
acquaintance in this body, which I could have 
wished might have been otherwise ; but I had 
used philosophy and forgotten them. I paid 
the honorable member the attention of listen- 
ing with respect to his first speech ; and when 



232 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

he sat down, though surprised, and I must even 
say astonished, at some of his opinions, nothing 
was farther from my intention than to com- 
mence any personal warfare. Through the 
whole of the few remarks I made in answer, I 
avoided, studiously and carefully, every thing 
which I thought possible to be construed into 
disrespect. And, Sir, while there is thus noth- 
ing originating liere which I have wished at 
any time, or now wish, to discharge, I must 
repeat, also, that nothing has been received 
here which rankles, or in any way gives me 
annoyance. I will not accuse the honorable 
member of violating the rules of civilized war; 
I will not say that he poisoned his arrows. 
But whether his shafts were, or were not, 
dipped in that which would have caused rank- 
ling if they had reached their destination, there 
was not, as it happened, quite strength enough 
in the bow to bring them to their mark. If he 
wishes now to gather up those shafts, he must 
look for them elsewhere ; they will not be 
found fixed and quivering in the object at 
which they were aimed. 

The honorable member complained that I 
slept on his speech. I must have slept on it, 
or not slept at all. The moment the honora- 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 233 

ble member sat down, his friend from Missouri 
rose, and, with much honeyed coramendation 
of the speech, suggested that the impressions 
which it had produced were too charming and 
deHghtful to be disturbed by other sentiments 
or other sounds, and proposed that the Senate 
should adjourn. Would it have been quite 
amiable in me. Sir, to interrupt this excellent 
good feeling? Must I not have been absolutely 
malicious, if I could have thrust myself for- 
ward, to destroy sensations thus pleasing? 
Was it not much better and kinder, both to 
sleep upon them myself, and to allow others 
also the pleasure of sleeping upon them ? But 
if it be meant, by sleeping upon his speech, that 
I took time to prepare a reply to it, it is quite 
a mistake. Owing to other engagements, I 
could not employ even the interval between the 
adjournment of the Senate and its meeting the 
next morning, in attention to the subject of 
this debate. Nevertheless, Sir, the mere mat- 
ter of fact is undoubtedly true. I did sleep on 
the gentleman's speech, and slept soundly. 
And I slept equally well on his speech of yes- 
terday, to which I am now replying. It is 
quite possible that in this respect, also, I 
possess some advantage oyer the honorable 



234 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

member, attributable, doubtless, to a cooler 
temperament on my part ; for, in truth, I slept 
upon his speeches remarkably well. 

But the gentleman inquires why HE was made 
the object of such a reply. Why was //^singled 
out ? If an attack has been made on the East, 
he, he assures us, did not begin it ; it was made 
by the gentleman from Missouri. Sir, I an- 
swered the gentleman's speech because I hap- 
pened to hear it ; and because, also, I choose to 
give an answer to that speech, which, if un- 
answered, I thought most likely to produce in- 
jurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire 
who was the original drawer of the bill. I found 
a responsible indorser before me, and it was my 
purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to 
his just responsibility without delay. But, sir, 
this interrogatory of the honorable member was 
only introductory to another. He proceeded 
to ask me whether I had turned upon him in 
this debate, from the consciousness that I 
should find an overmatch, if I ventured on a 
contest with his friend from Missouri. If, sir, 
the honorable member, modestice gratia, had 
chosen thus to defer to his friend, and to pay 
him compliments, without intentional disparage- 
ment to others, it would have been quite ac- 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 235 

cording to the friendly courtesies of debate, 
and not at all ungrateful to my own feelings. 
I am not one of those, sir, who esteem any 
tribute of regard, whether light and occasional, 
or more serious and deliberate, which may be 
bestowed on others, as so much unjustly with- 
holden from themselves. But the tone and the 
manner of the gentleman's question forbid me 
thus to interpret it. I am not at liberty to con- 
sider it as nothing more than a civility to his 
friend. It had an air of taunt and disparage- 
ment, something of the loftiness of asserted 
superiority, which does not allow me to pass it 
over without notice. It was put as a question 
for me to answer, and so put as if it were diffi- 
cult for me to answer whether I deemed the 
member from Missouri an overmatch for my- 
self in debate here. It seems to me, sir, that 
this is extraordinary language, and an extraor- 
dinary tone, for the discussions of this body. 

Matches and overmatches ! Those terms are 
more applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter 
for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentle- 
man seems to forget where and what we are. 
This is a Senate, a Senate of equals, of men of 
individual honor and personal character, and of 
absolute independerlce. We know no masters, 



236 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for 
mutual consultation and discussion ; not an 
arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer 
myself, sir, as a match for no man ; I throw the 
challenge of debate at no man's feet. But then, 
sir, since the honorable member has put the 
question in a manner that calls for an answer, 
I will give him an answer ; and I tell him, that, 
holding myself to be the humblest of the mem- 
bers here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his 
friend from Missouri, either alone or when 
aided by the arm of his friend from South 
Carolina, that need deter even me from es- 
pousing whatever opinions I may choose to 
espouse, from debating whenever I may 
choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I 
may see fit to say, on the f^oor of the Senate. 
Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation 
or compliment, I should dissent from nothing 
which the honoi-able member might say of his 
friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions 
of my own. But when put to me as a matter 
of taunt, I throw it back, and say to the gentle- 
man, that he could possibly say nothing less 
likely than such a comparison to wound my 
pride of personal character. The anger of its 
tone rescued the remark from intentional irony. 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 237 

which otherwise, probably, would have been its 
general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined 
by this mutual quotation and commendation ; 
if it be supposed that, by casting the characters 
of the drama, assigning to each his part, to one 
the attack, to another the cry of onset ; or if it 
be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of 
anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won 
here ; if it be imagined, especially, that any, or 
all of these things will shake any purpose of 
mine, I can tell the honorable member, once for 
all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is 
dealing with one of whose temper and character 
he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow 
myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occasion, 
to be betrayed into any loss of temper ; but if 
provoked, as I trust I never shall be, into crim- 
ination and recrimination, the honorable member 
may, perhaps, find that in that contest, there 
will be blows to take as well as blows to give ; 
that others can state comparisons as significant, 
at least, as his own, and that his impunity may 
possibly demand of him whatever powers of 
taunt and sarcasm he may possess. I com- 
mend him to a prudent husbandry of his 
resources. * * * 

On yet another point, I was still more unac- 



238 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

countably misunderstood. The gentlemen had 
harangued against " consoHdation." I told him, 
in reply, that there was one kind of consolidation 
to which I was attached, and that was the consoli- 
dation of our Union ; that this was precisely 
that consolidation to which I feared others were 
not attached, and that such consolidation was 
the very end of the Constitution, the leading 
object, as they had informed us themselves, 
which its framers had kept in view. I turned 
to their communication, and read their very 
words, " the consolidation of the Union," and 
expressed my devotion to this sort of consolida- 
tion. I said, in terms, that I wished not in the 
slightest degree to augment the powers of this 
government ; that my object was to preserve, 
not to enlarge ; and that by consolidating the 
Union I understood no more than the strength- 
ening of the Union, and perpetuating it. Hav- 
ing been thus explicit, having thus read from 
the printed book the precise words which I 
adopted, as expressing my own sentiments, it 
passes comprehension how any man could un- 
derstand me as contending for an extension of 
the powers of the government, or for consolida- 
tion in that odious sense in which it means an 
accumulation, in the Federal Government, of the 
powers properly belonging to the States. 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 239 

I repeat, sir, that, in adopting the sentiments 
of the framers of the Constitution, I read their 
language audibly, and word for word ; and I 
pointed out the distinction, just as fully as I 
have now done, between the consolidation of 
the Union and that other obnoxious consolida- 
tion which I disclaim. And yet the honorable 
member misunderstood me. The gentleman 
had said that he wished for no fixed revenue, 
— not a shilling. If by a word he could convert 
the Capitol into gold, he would not do it. Why 
all this fear of revenue ? Why, sir, because, as 
the gentleman told us, it tends to consolidation. 
Now this can mean neither more nor less than 
that a common revenue is a common interest, 
and that all common interests tend to preserve 
the union of the States. I confess I like that 
tendency ; if the gentleman dislikes it, he is 
right in deprecating a shilling of fixed revenue. 
So much, sir, for consolidation. * * * 

Professing to be provoked by what he chose 
to consider a charge made by me against South 
Carolina, the honorable member, Mr. President, 
has taken up a crusade against New England. 
Leaving altogether the subject of the public 
lands, in which his success, perhaps, had been 
neither distinguished nor satisfactory, and let- 



240 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

ting go, also, of the topic of the tariff, he 
salHed forth in a general assault on the opin- 
ions, politics, and parties of New England, as 
they have been exibited in the last thirty 
years. * * * 

New England has, at times, so argues the 
gentleman, held opinions as dangerous as those 
which he now holds. Suppose this were so ; 
how should he therefore abuse New England? 
If he find himself countenanced by acts of hers, 
how is it that, while he relies on these acts, he 
covers, or seeks to cover, their authors with re- 
proach? But, sir, if in the course of forty 
years, there have been undue effervescences of 
party in New England, has the same thing hap- 
pened nowhere else ? Party animosity and par- 
ty outrage, not in New England, but elsewhere, 
denounced President Washington, not only as a 
Federalist, but as a Tory, a British agent, a man 
who in his high office sanctioned corruption. 
But does the honorable member suppose, if I 
had a tender here who should put such an 
effusion of wickedness and folly into my hand, 
that I would stand up and read it against the 
South? Parties ran into great heats again in 
1799 and 1800. What was said, sir, or rather 
what was not said, in_ those years, against John 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 24I 

Adams, one of the committee that drafted the 
Declaration of Independence, and its admitted 
ablest defender on the floor of Congress? If 
the gentleman wishes to increase his stores of 
party abuse and frothy violence, if he has a de- 
termined proclivity to such pursuits, there are 
treasures of that sort south of the Potomac, 
much to his taste, yet untouched. I shall not 
touch them. * * * The gentleman's per- 
veyors have only catered for him among the 
productions of one side. I certainly shall not 
supply the deficiency by furnishing him samples 
of the other. I leave to him, and to them, the 
whole concern. It is enough for me to say, 
that if, in any part of their grateful occupation, 
if, in all their researches, they find any thing in 
the history of Massachusetts, or of New Eng- 
land, or in the proceedings of any legislative or 
other public body, disloyal to the Union, speak- 
ing slightingly of its value, proposing to break it 
up, or recommending non-intercourse with neigh- 
boring States, on account of difference in politi- 
~cal opinion, then, sir, I give them all up to the 
honorable gentleman's unrestrained rebuke ; ex- 
pecting, however, that he will extend his buffet- 
ings in like manner, to all similar proceedings, 
wherever else found. * * * 



242 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Mr. President, in carrying his warfare, such 
as it is, into New England, the honorable gen- 
tleman all along professes to be acting on the 
defensive. He chooses to consider me as hav- 
ing assailed South Carolina, and insists that he 
comes forth only as her champion, and in her 
defence. Sir, I do not admit that I made any 
attack whatever on South Carolina. Nothing 
like it. The honorable member, in his first 
speech, expressed opinions, in regard to revenue 
and some other topics, which I heard with both 
pain and surprise. I told the gentleman I 
was aware that such sentiments were enter- 
tained out of the Government, but had not ex- 
pected to find them advanced in it ; that I 
knew there were persons in the South who 
speak of our Union with indifference or doubt, 
taking pains to magnify its evils, and to say 
nothing of its benefits ; that the honorable 
member himself, I was sure, could never be 
one of these ; and I regretted the expression of 
such opinions as he had avowed, because I 
thought their obvious tendency was to encour- 
age feelings of disrespect to the Union, and 
to impair its strength. This, sir, is the sum 
and substance of all I said on the subject. 
And this constitutes the attack which called on 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 243 

the chivalry of the gentleman, in his own opin- 
ion, to harry us with such a foray among the 
party pamphlets and party proceedings in Mass- 
achusetts ! If he means that I spoke with dis- 
satisfaction or disrespect of the ebullitions of 
individuals in South Carolina, it is true. But 
if he means that I assailed the character of the 
State, her honor, or patriotism, that I reflected 
on her history or her conduct, he has not 
the slightest grounds for any such assumption. 
* * * I shall not acknowledge that the honor- 
able member goes before me in regard for what- 
ever of distinguished talent or distinguished 
character South Carolina has produced. I claim 
part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her 
great names. I claim them for my country- 
men, one and all, the Laurenses, the Rutledges, 
the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions, — 
Americans all, whose fame is no more to be 
hemmed in by State lines than their talents 
and patriotism were capable of being circum- 
scribed within the same narrow limits. In their 
day and generation they served and honored 
the country, and the whole country ; and their 
renown is of the treasures of the whole country. 
Him whose honored name the gentleman him- 
self bears — does he esteem me less capable of 



244 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for 
his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened 
upon the light of Massachusetts, instead of 
South CaroHna? Sir, does he suppose it in 
his power to exhibit a CaroHna name so 
bright as to produce envy in my bosom? 
No, sir ; increased gratification and dehght, 
rather. I thank God that, if I am gifted 
with Httle of the spirit which is able to raise 
mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I 
trust, of that other spirit which would drag 
angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in 
my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to 
sneer at public merit, because it happens to 
spring up beyond the little limits of my own 
State or neighborhood ; when I refuse, for any 
such cause, or for any cause, the homage due 
to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to 
sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, 
if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, 
if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue, in 
any son of the South ; and if, moved by local 
prejudices or gangrened by State jealousy, I 
get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his 
just character and just fame, may my tongue 
cleave to the roof of my mouth ! 

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 245 

let me indulge in refreshing remembrances of 
the past ; let me remind you that, in early times, 
no States cherished greater harmony, both of 
principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and 
South Carolina. Would to God that harmony 
might again return ! Shoulder to shoulder they 
went through the Revolution, hand in hand 
they stood round the administration of Wash- 
ington, and felt his own great arm lean on them 
for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, aliena- 
tion, and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to 
such soils, of false principles since sown. They 
are weeds, the seeds of which that same great 
arm never scattered. 

Mr. President, I shall enter upon no enco- 
mium of Massachusetts ; she needs none. There 
she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. 
There is her history; the world knows it by 
heart. The past, at leagt, is secure. There is 
Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and 
Bunker Hill ; and there they will remain for 
ever. The bones of her sons, falling in the 
great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled 
with the soil of every State from New England 
to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. And, 
sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, 
and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, 



246 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

there it still lives, in the strength of its man- 
hood, and full of its original spirit. If discord 
and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and 
blind ambition shall hawk and tear it, if folly 
and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and 
necessary restraint shall succeed in separating 
it from that Union, by which alone its existence 
is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the 
side of that cradle in which its infancy was 
rocked ; it will stretch forth its arm with what- 
ever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends 
who gather round it ; and it will fall at last, if 
fall it must, amidst the profoundest monuments 
of its own glory, and on the very spot of its 
origin. 

There yet remains to be performed, Mr. 
President, by far the most grave and important 
duty which I feel to be devolved upon me by 
this occasion. It is to state, and to defend, 
what I conceive to be the true principles of the 
Constitution under which we are here assembled. 
I might well have desired that so weighty a task 
should have fallen into other and abler hands. 
I could have wished that it should have been 
executed by those whose character and experi- 
ence give weight and influence to their opinions, 
such as cannot possibly belong to mine. But, 



REPL Y TO HA YNE. 247 

sir, I have met the occasion, not sought it ; and 
I shall proceed to state my own sentiments, 
without challenging for them any particular re- 
gard, with studied plainness, and as much pre- 
cision as possible. 

I understand the honorable gentleman from 
South Carolina to maintain that it is a right of 
the State Legislatures to interfere whenever, in 
their judgment, this government transcends its 
constitutional limits, and to arrest the opera- 
tion of its laws. 

I understand him to maintain this right, as a 
right existing wider the Constitution, not as a 
right to overthrow it on the ground of extreme 
necessity, such as would justify violent revolu- 
tion. 

I understand him to maintain an authority on 
the part of the. States, thus to interfere, for the 
purpose of correcting the exercise of power by 
the General Government, of checking it and of 
compelling it to conform to their opinion of the 
extent of its powers. 

I understand him to maintain, that the ulti- 
mate power of judging of the constitutional 
extent of its own authority is not lodged ex- 
clusively in the General Government, or any 
branch of it ; but that, on the contrary, the 



248 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

States may lawfully decide for themselves, and 
each State for itself, whether, in a given case, 
the act of the General Government transcends 
its power. 

I understand him to insist, that, if the exigen- 
cies of the case, in the opinion of any State 
government, require it, such State government 
may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an 
act of the General Government which it deems 
plainly and palpably unconstitutional. 

This is the sum of what I understand from him 
to be the South Carolina doctrine, and the doc- 
trine which he maintains. I propose to consider 
it, and compare it with the Constitution. Allow 
me to say, as a preliminary remark, that I call this 
the South Carolina doctrine only because the 
gentleman himself has so denominated it. I 
do not feel at liberty to say that South Caro- 
lina, as a State, has ever advanced these senti- 
ments. I hope she has not, and never may. 
That a great majority of her people are opposed 
to the tariff laws, is doubtless true. That a 
majority, somewhat less than that just men- 
tioned, conscientiously believe these laws un- 
constitutional, may probably also be true. But 
that any majority holds .to the right of direct 
State interference at State discretion, the right 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 249 

of nullifying acts of Congress by acts of State 
legislation, is more than I know, and what I 
shall be slow to believe. 

That there are individuals besides the honor- 
able gentleman who do maintain these opin- 
ions, is quite certain. I recollect the recent 
expression of a sentiment, which circumstances 
attending its utterance and publication justify 
us in supposing was not unpremeditated. " The 
sovereignty of the State, — never to be con- 
trolled, construed, or decided on, but by her 
own feelings of honorable justice." 

[Mr. Hayne here rose and said, that, for the 
purpose of being clearly understood, he would 
state that his proposition was in the words of 
the Virginia resolution as follows : — 

" That this assembly doth explicitly and per- 
emptorily declare, that it views the powers of 
the Federal Government, as resulting from the 
compact to which the States are parties, as 
limited by the plain sense and intention of the 
instrument constituting that compact, as no 
farther valid than they are authorized by the 
grants enumerated in that compact ; and that, 
in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous 
exercise of other powers not granted by the said 
compact, the States that are parties thereto 



250 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

have the right, and are in duty bound to inter- 
pose for arresting the progress of the evil, and 
for maintaining within their respective Hmits 
the authorities, rights, and hberties appertain- 
ing to them. 

Mr. Webster resumed :] 

I am quite aware, Mr. President, of the 
existence of the resolution which the gentleman 
read, and has now repeated, and that he relies 
on it as his authority. I know the source, too, 
from which it is understood to have proceeded. 
I need not say that I have much respect 
for the constitutional opinions of Mr. Madison ; 
they would weigh greatly with me always. 
But before the authority of his opinion be 
vouched for the gentleman's proposition, it will 
be proper to consider what is the fair inter- 
pretation of that resolution, to which Mr. Madi- 
son is understood to have given his sanction. 
As the gentleman construes it, it is an au- 
thority for him. Possibly, he may not have 
adopted the right construction. That resolu- 
tion declares, that, in the case of the dangerous 
exercise of powers not granted by the General 
Government, the States may interpose to arrest 
the progress of the evil. But how interpose, 
and what does this declaration purport ? Does 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 25 I 

it mean no more than that there may be 
extreme cases, in which the people, in any 
mode of assembHng, may resist usurpation, 
and reheve themselves from a tyrannical gov- 
ernment? No one will deny this. Such re- 
sistance is not only acknowledged to be just 
in America, but in England also, Blackstone 
admits as much, in the theory, and practice, 
too, of the English Constitution. We, sir, 
who oppose the Carolina doctrine, do not deny 
that the people may, if they choose, throw off 
any government when it becomes oppressive 
and intolerable, and erect a better in its stead. 
We all know that civil institutions are estab- 
lished for the public benefit, and that when 
they cease to answer the ends of their existence 
they may be changed. But I do not under- 
stand the doctrine now contended for to be 
that, which, for the sake of distinction, we 
may call the right of revolution. I understand 
the gentleman to maintain, that, without 
revolution, without civil commotion, without 
rebellion, a remedy for supposed abuse and 
transgression of the powers of the General 
Government lies in a direct appeal to the inter- 
ference of the State governments. 

[Mr. Hayne here arose and said : He did 



252 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

not contend for the mere right of revolution, 
but for the right of constitutional resistance. 
What he maintained was, that in a case of 
plain, palpable violation of the Constitution 
by the General Government, a State may inter- 
pose ; and that this interposition is consti- 
tutional. 

Mr. Webster resumed :] 

So, sir, I understood the gentleman, and am 
happy to find that I did not misunderstand 
him. What he contends for is, that it is con- 
stitutional to interrupt the administration of 
the Constitution itself, in the hands of those 
who are chosen and sworn to administer it, 
by the direct interference, in form of law, 
of the States, in virtue of their sovereign 
capacity. The inherent right in the people to 
reform their government I do not deny ; and 
they have another right, and that is, to resist 
unconstitutional laws, without overturning the 
government. It is no doctrine of mine that 
unconstitutional laws bind the people. The 
great question is, Whose prerogative is it 
to decide on the constitutionality or unconsti- 
tutionality of the laws? On that, the main 
debate hinges. The proposition, that, in case 
of a supposed violation of the Constitution by 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 253 

Congress, the States have a constitutional right 
to interfere and annul the law of Congress is 
the proposition of the gentleman. I do not 
admit it. If the gentleman had intended no 
more than to assert the right of revolution 
for justifiable cause, he would have said only 
what all agree to. But I cannot conceive that 
there can be a middle course, between submis- 
sion to the laws, when regularly pronounced 
constitutional, on the one hand, and open 
resistance, which is revolution or rebellion, 
on the other. I say, the right of a State to 
annul a law of Congress cannot be maintained, 
but on the ground of the inalienable right of 
man to resist oppression ; that is to^say, upon 
the ground of revolution. I admit that there 
is an ultimate violent remedy, above the Consti- 
tution and in defiance of the Constitution, 
which may be resorted to when a revolution is 
to be justified. But I do not admit, that, un- 
der the Constitution and in conformity with it, 
there is any mode in which a State govern- 
ment, as a member of the Union, can interfere 
and stop the progress of the General Govern- 
ment, by force of her own laws^ under any 
circumstances whatever. 

This leads us to inquire into the origin of 



254 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

this government and the source of its power. 
Whose agent is it ? Is it the creature of the 
State Legislatures, or the creature of the people ? 
If the Government of the United States be the 
agent of the State governments, then they may 
control it, provided they can agree in the man- 
ner of controlling it ; if it be the agent of the 
people, then the people alone can control it, 
restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observ- 
able enough, that the docrine for which the 
honorable gentleman contends leads him to the 
necessity of maintaining, not only that this Gen- 
eral Government is the creature of the States, 
but that it is the creature of each of the States, 
severally, so that each may assert the power 
for itself of determining whether it acts within 
the limits of its authority. It is the servant of 
four-and-twenty masters, of different wills and 
different purposes, and yet bound to obey all. 
This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from 
a misconception as to the origin of this govern- 
ment and its true character. It is, sir, the 
people's Constitution, the people's government, 
made for the people, made by the people, and 
answerable to the people. The people of the 
United States have declared that this Constitu- 
tion shall be supreme law. We must either ad- 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 255 

mit the proposition, or deny their authority. 
The States are, unquestionably, sovereign, so 
far as their sovereignty is not affected by this 
supreme law. But the State Legislatures, as 
political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not 
sovereign over the people. So far as the people 
have given power to the General Government, 
so far the grant is unquestionably good, and 
the Government holds of the people, and not of 
the State governments. We are all agents of 
the same supreme power, the people. The 
General Government and the State governments 
derive their authority from the same source. 
Neither can, in relation to the other, be called 
primary, though one is definite and restricted, 
and the other general and residuary. The Na- 
tional Government possesses those powers 
which it can be shown the people have con- 
ferred on it, and no more. All the rest belongs 
to the State governments, or to the people 
themselves. So far as the people have re- 
strained State sovereignty by the expression of 
their will, in the Constitution of the United 
States, so far, it must be admitted, State sov- 
ereignty is effectually controlled. I do not 
contend that it is, or ought to be, controlled 
farther. The sentiment to which I have re- 



256 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

ferred propounds that State sovereignty is only 
to be controlled by its own " feeling of justice" 
— that is to say, it is not to be controlled at all, 
for one who is to follow his own feelings is un- 
der no legal control. Now, however men may 
think this ought to be, the fact is that the 
people of the United States have chosen to im- 
pose control on State sovereignties. There 
are those, doubtless, who wish they had been 
left without restraint ; but the Constitution has 
ordered the matter differently. To make war, 
for instance, is an exercise of sovereignty ; but 
the Constitution declares that no State shall 
make war. To coin money is another exercise 
of sovereign power ; but no State is at liberty 
to coin money. Again, the Constitution says 
that no sovereign State shall be so sovereign as 
to make a treaty. These prohibitions, it must 
be confessed, are a control on the State sov- 
ereignty of South Carolina, as well as of the 
other States, which does not arise " from her 
own feelings of honorable justice." The opinion 
referred to, therefore, is in defiance of the plain- 
est provisions of the Constitution. 

There are other proceedings of public bodies 
which have already been alluded to, and to which 
I refer again, for the purpose of ascertaining 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 257 

more fully what is the length and breadth of 
that doctrine denominated the Carolina doctrine, 
which the honorable member has now stood up 
on this floor to maintain. In one of them I 
find it resolved, that " the tariff of 1828, and 
every other tariff designed to promote one 
branch of industry at the expense of others, is 
contrary to the meaning and intention of the 
federal compact, and such a dangerous, palpa- 
ble, and deliberate usurpation of power, by a 
determined majority, wielding the General Gov- 
ernment beyond the limits of its delegated 
powers, as calls upon the States which compose 
the suffering minority, in their sovereign capac- 
ity, to exercise the powers which, as sovereigns, 
necessarily devolve upon them when their con- 
tract is violated." 

Observe, sir, that this resolution holds the 
tariff of 1828, and every other tariff designed to 
promote one branch of industry at the expense 
of another, to be such a dangerous, palpable, 
and deliberate usurpation of power, as calls 
upon the States, in their sovereign capacity, to 
interfere by their own authority. This denun- 
ciation, Mr. President, you will please to ob- 
serve, includes our old tariff of 18 16, as well as 
all others ; because that was established to pro- 



258 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

mote the interest of the manufacturers of cot- 
ton, to the manifest and admitted injury of the 
Calcutta cotton trade. Observe, again, that all 
the qualifications are here rehearsed and charged 
upon the tariff, which are necessary to bring 
the case within the gentleman's proposition. 
The tariff is a usurpation ; it is a dangerous 
usurpation ; it is a palpable usurpation ; it is a 
deliberate usurpation. It is such a usurpation, 
therefore, as calls upon the States to exercise 
their right of interference. Here is a case, 
then, within the gentleman's principles, and all 
his qualifications of his principles. It is a case 
for action. The Constitution is plainly, dan- 
gerously, palpably, and deliberately violated ; 
and the States must interpose their own author- 
ity to arrest the law. Let us suppose the State 
of South Carolina to express the same opinion, 
by the voice of her Legislature. That would 
be very imposing ; but what then ? It so hap- 
pens that, at the very moment, when South 
Carolina resolves that the tariff laws are uncon- 
stitutional, Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve 
exactly the reverse. They hold those laws to 
be both highly proper and strictly constitu- 
tional. And now, sir, how does the honorable 
member propose to deal with this case ? How 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 259 

does he relieve us from this difficulty upon any 
principle of his ? His construction gets us into 
it ; how does he propose to get us out ? 

In Carolina the tariff is a palpable, deliberate 
usurpation ; Carolina, therefore, may nullify it, 
and refuse to pay the duties. In Pennsylvania 
it is both clearly constitutional and highly ex- 
pedient ; and there the duties are to be paid. 
And yet we live under a government of uniform 
laws, and under a constitution, too, which con- 
tains an express provision, as it happens, that 
all duties shall be equal in all States. Does not 
this approach absurdity? 

If there be no power to settle such questions, 
independent of either of the States, is not the 
whole Union a rope ^of sand ? Are we not 
thrown back again precisely upon the old Con- 
federation ? 

It is too plain to be argued. Four-and- 
twenty interpreters of constitutional law, each 
with a power to decide for itself, and none 
with authority to bind any body else, and this 
constitutional law the only bond of their 
union ! What is such a state of things but a 
mere connection during pleasure, or to use the 
phraseology of the times, during feeling ? And 
that feeling, too, not the feeling of the people, 



26o DANIEL WEBSTER. 

who established the Constitution, but the feel- 
ing of the State governments. 

In another of the South Carolina addresses, 
having premised that the crisis requires "all 
the concentrated energy of passion," an atti- 
tude of open resistance to the laws of the 
Union is advised. Open resistance to the laws, 
then, is the constitutional remedy, the conserva- 
tive power of the State, which the South Caro- 
lina doctrines teach for the redress of politi- 
cal evils, real or imaginary. And its authors 
further say, that, appealing with confidence to 
the Constitution itself, to justify their opinions, 
they cannot consent to try their accuracy by 
the courts of justice. In one sense, indeed, 
sir, this is assuming an attitude of open resist- 
ance in favor of liberty. But what sort of lib- 
erty ? The liberty of establishing their own 
opinions, in defiance of the opinions of all 
others ; the liberty of judging and deciding ex- 
clusively themselves, in a matter in which oth- 
ers have as much right to judge and decide as 
they ; the liberty of placing their own opinion 
above the judgment of all others, above the 
laws, and above the Constitution. This is their 
liberty, and this is the fair result of the propo- 
sition contended for by the honorable gentle- 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 26 1 

man. Or, it may be more properly said, it is 
identical with it, rather than a result from 
it. * * * 

Sir, the human mind is so constituted, that 
the merits of both sides of a controversy ap- 
pear very clear, and very palpable, to those 
who respectively espouse them ; and both sides 
usually grow clearer as the controversy ad- 
vances. South Carolina sees unconstitution- 
ality in the tariff ; she sees oppression there 
also, and she sees danger. Pennsylvania, with 
a vision not less sharp, looks at the same tariff, 
and sees no such thing in it ; she sees it all 
constitutional, all useful, all safe. The faith of 
South Carolina is strengthened by opposition, 
and she now not only sees, but resolves, that 
the tariff is palpably unconstitutional, oppres- 
sive, and dangerous ; but Pennsylvania, not to 
be behind her neighbors, and equally willing to 
strengthen her own faith by a confident assever- 
ation resolves, also, and gives to every warm af- 
firmative of South Carolina, a plain, downright, 
Pennsylvania negative. South Carolina, to 
show the strength and unity of her opinion, 
brings her assembly to a unanimity, within 
seven voices ; Pennsylvania, not to be outdone 
in this respect any more than in others, reduces 



262 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

her dissentient fraction to a single vote. Now, 
sir, again, I ask the gentleman, What is to be 
done ? Are these States both right ? Is he 
bound to consider them both right? If not, 
which is in the wrong? or, rather, which has 
the best right to decide ? And if he, and if I, 
are not to know what the Constitution means, 
and what it is, till those two State legislatures, 
and the twenty-two others, shall agree in its 
construction, what have we sworn to, when we 
have sworn to maintain it ? I was forcibly 
struck, sir, with one reflection, as the gentle- 
man went on in his speech. He quoted Mr. 
Madison's resolutions, to prove that a State 
may interfere, in a case of deliberate, palpable, 
and dangerous exercise of a power not granted. 
The honorable member supposes the tariff law 
to be such an exercise of power ; and that con- 
sequently a case has arisen in which the State 
may, if it see fit, interfere by its own law. Now 
it so happens, nevertheless, that Mr. Madison 
deems this same tariff law quite constitutional. 
Instead of a clear and palpable violation, it is, 
in his judgment, no violation at all. So that, 
while they use his authority in a hypothetical 
case, they reject it in the very case before 
them. All this, sir, shows the inherent futility, 



REPL V TO HA YNE. 263 

I had almost used a stronger word, of conced- 
ing this power of interference to the State, and 
then attempting to secure it from abuse by im- 
posing quahfications of which the States them- 
selves are to judge. One of two things is true ; 
either the laws of the Union are beyond the dis- 
cretion and beyond the control of the States ; 
or else we have no constitution of general gov- 
ernment, and are thrust back again to the 
days of the Confederation. * * * 

I must now beg to ask, sir, whence is this 
supposed right of the States derived ? Where 
do they find the power to interfere with the 
laws of the Union ? Sir, the opinion which the 
honorable gentleman maintains, is a notion 
founded in a total misapprehension, in my 
judgment, of the origin of this government, 
and of the foundation on which it stands. I 
hold it to be a popular government, erected by 
the people ; those who administer it, responsi- 
ble to the people ; and itself capable of being 
amended and modified, just as the people may 
choose it should be. It is as popular, just as 
truly emanating from the people, as the State 
governments. It is created for one purpose ; 
the State governments for another. It has its 
own powers ; they have theirs. There is no 



264 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

more authority with them to arrest the opera- 
tion of a law of Congress, than with Congress 
to arrest the operation of their laws. We are 
here to administer a constitution emanating 
immediately from the people, and trusted by 
them to our administration. It is not the 
creature of the State governments. * * * 

This government, sir, is the independent off- 
spring of the popular will. It is not the 
creature of State legislatures ; nay, more, if 
the whole truth must be told, the people 
brought it into existence, established it, and 
have hitherto supported it, for the very purpose 
amongst others, of imposing certain salutary 
restraints on State sovereignties. The States 
cannot now make war ; they cannot contract 
alliances ; they cannot make, each for itself, 
separate regulations of commerce ; they cannot 
lay imposts ; they cannot coin money. If this 
Constitution, sir, be the creature of State legis- 
latures, it must be admitted that it has obtained 
a strange control over the volitions of its crea- 
tors. 

The people, then, sir, erected this govern- 
ment. They gave it a constitution, and in that 
constitution they have enumerated the powers 
which they bestow on it. They have made it 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 265 

a limited government. They have defined its 
authority. They have restrained it to the ex- 
ercise of such powers as are granted ; and all 
others, they declare, are reserved to the States, 
or the people. But, sir, they have not stopped 
here. If they had, they would have accom- 
plished but half their work. No definition 
can be so clear as to avoid the possibility of 
doubt ; no limitation so precise, as to exclude 
all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this 
grant of the people ? Who shall interpret their 
will, where it may be supposed they have left 
it doubtful ? With whom do they repose this 
ultimate right of deciding on the powers of the 
government ? Sir, they have settled all this in 
the fullest manner. They have left it with the 
government itself, in its appropriate branches. 
Sir, the very chief end, the main design, for 
which the whole Constitution was framed and 
adopted, was to establish a government that 
should not be obliged to act through State 
agency, or depend on State opinion or State 
discretion. The people had had quite enough 
of that kind of government under the Confeder- 
ation. Under that system, the legal action, the 
application of law to individuals, belonged ex- 
clusively to the States. Congress could only 



266 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

recommend ; their acts were not of binding 
force, till the States had adopted and sanctioned 
them. Are we in that condition still ? Are 
we yet at the mercy of State discretion and 
State construction ? Sir, if we are, then vain 
will be our attempt to maintain the Constitu- 
tion under which we sit. 

But, sir, the people have wisely provided, 
in the Constitution itself, a proper, suitable 
mode and tribunal for settling questions of con- 
stitutional law. There are in the Constitution 
grants of powers to Congress, and restrictions 
on these powers. There are also prohibitions 
on the States. Some authority must, there- 
fore, necessarily exist, having the ultimate 
jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the interpreta- 
tion of these grants, restrictions, and prohibi- 
tions. The Constitution has itself pointed out, 
ordained, and established that authority. How 
has it accomplished this great and essential 
end ? By declaring, sir, that " the Constitution 
and the laws of the United States made in pur- 
suance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the 
land, any tiling in the Constitution or laws of 
any State to the contrary notwithstanding^ 

This, sir, was the first great step. By this 
the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 267 

of the United States is declared. The people 
so will it. No State law is to be valid which 
comes in conflict with the Constitution, or any 
law of the United States passed in pursuance 
of it. But who shall decide this question of 
interference ? To whom lies the last appeal ? 
This, sir, the Constitution itself decides also, by 
declaring, " that the judicial pouter shall extend 
to all cases arising under the Constitution and 
laws of the United States'' These two pro- 
visions cover the whole ground. They are, in 
truth, the keystone of the arch ! With these it 
is a government, without them a confedera- 
tion. In pursuance of these clear and express 
provisions, Congress established, at its very first 
session, in the judicial act, a mode for carrying 
them into full effect, and for bringing all ques- 
tions of constitutional power to the final decision 
of the Supreme Court, It then, sir, became a 
government. It then had the means of self- 
protection ; and but for this, it would, in all 
probability, have been now among things which 
are past. Having constituted the Government, 
and declared its powers, the people have fur- 
ther said, that, since somebody must decide on 
the extent of these powers, the Government 
shall itself decide ; subject, always, like other 



268 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

popular governments, to its responsibility to the 
people. And now, sir, I repeat, how is it that 
a State legislature acquires any power to inter- 
fere ? Who, or what gives them the right to 
say to the people : " We, who are your agents 
and servants for one purpose, will undertake to 
decide, that your other agents and servants, 
appointed by you for another purpose, have 
transcended the authority you gave them ! " 
The reply would be, I think, not impertinent : 
" Who made you a judge over another's ser- 
vants ? To their own masters they stand or 
fall." 

Sir, I deny this power of State legislatures 
altogether. It cannot stand the test of examina- 
tion. Gentlemen may say, that, in an extreme 
case, a State government may protect the people 
from intolerable oppression. Sir, in such a case 
the people might protect themselves without 
the aid of the State governments. Such a case 
warrants revolution. It must make, when it 
comes, a law for itself. A nullifying act of a 
State legislature cannot alter the case, nor make 
resistance any more lawful. In maintaining 
these sentiments, sir, I am but asserting the 
rights of the people. I state what they have 
declared, and insist on their right to declare it. 



RE PL V TO HA YNE. 26g 

They have chosen to repose this power in the 
General Government, and I think it my duty to 
support it Hke other constitutional powers. 

For myself, sir, I do not admit the compe- 
tency of South Carolina or any other State to 
prescribe my constitutional duty ; or to settle, 
between me and the people the validity of laws 
of Congress for which I have voted. I decline 
her umpirage. I have not sworn to support the 
Constitution according to her construction of 
the clauses. I have not stipulated by my oath 
of ofifice or otherwise, to come under any respon- 
sibility, except to the people, and those whom 
they have appointed to pass upon the question, 
whether laws, supported by my votes, conform 
to the Constitution of the country. And, 
sir, if we look to the general nature of the 
case, could any thing have been more pre- 
posterous than to make a government for 
the whole Union, and yet leave its powers 
subject, not to one interpretation, but to thirteen 
or twenty-four interpretations ? Instead of one 
tribunal, established by all, responsible to all, 
with power to decide for all, shall constitu- 
tional questions be left to four-and-twenty 
popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for it- 
self, and none bound to respect the decisions 



270 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

of others ; and each at liberty, too, to give a 
new constitution on every new election of its 
own members ? Would any thing, with such a 
principle in it, or rather with such a destitution 
of all principle be fit to be called a government ? 
No, sir. It should not be denominated a con- 
stitution. It should be called, rather, a collec- 
tion of topics for everlasting controversy ; heads 
of debate for a disputatious people. It would 
not be a government. It would not be adequate 
to any practical good, or fit for any country to 
live under. 

To avoid all possioility of being misunder- 
stood, allow me to repeat again in the fullest 
manner, that I claim no powers for the govern- 
ment by forced or unfair construction. I admit 
that it is a government of strictly limited 
powers ; of enumerated, specified, and particular- 
ized powers ; and that whatsoever is not granted 
is witheld. But notwithstanding all this, and 
however the grant of powers may be expressed, 
its limit and extent may yet, in some cases, 
admit of doubt ; and the General Government 
would be good for nothing, it would be in- 
capable of long existing, if some mode had not 
been provided in which those doubts as they 
should arise, might be peaceably but authori- 
tatively solved. 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 2/1 

And now, Mr, President, let me run the hon- 
orable gentleman's doctrine a little into its 
practical application. Let us look at his proba- 
ble modus operandi. If a thing can be done, 
an ingenious man can tell Jiow it is to be done, 
and I wish to be informed liow this State inter- 
ference is to be put in practice, without vio- 
lence, bloodshed, and rebellion. We will take 
the existing case of the tariff law. South Caro- 
lina is said to have made up her opinion upon 
it. If we do not repeal it (as we probably shall 
not), she will then apply to the case the remedy 
of her doctrine. She will, we must suppose, 
pass a law of her legislature, declaring the 
several acts of Congress, usually called the 
tariff laws, null and void, so far as they respect 
South Carolina, or the citizens thereof. So 
far, all is a paper transaction, and easy enough. 
But the collector at Charleston is collecting the 
duties imposed by these tariff laws. He, there- 
fore, must be stopped. The collector will seize 
the goods if the tariff duties are not paid. The 
State authorities will undertake their rescue, 
the marshal, with his posse, will come to the 
collector's aid, and here the contest begins. 
The militia of the State will be called out to 
sustain the nullifying act. They will march, 



272 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

sir, under a very gallant leader ; for I believe 
the honorable member himself commands the 
militia of that part of the State. He will raise 
the Nullifying Act on his standard, and 
spread it out as his banner ! It will have a pre- 
amble, setting forth, that the tariff laws are pal- 
pable, deliberate, and dangerous violations of 
the Constitution ! He will proceed, with this 
banner flying, to the custom-house in Charles- 
ton, 

' ' All the while. 
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds." 

Arrived at the custom-house, he will tell the 
collector that he must collect no more duties 
under any of the tariff laws. This he will be 
somewhat puzzled to say, by the way, with a 
grave countenance, considering what hand 
South Carolina herself had in that of 1816. 
But, sir, the collector would not, probably, de- 
sist at his bidding. He would show him the 
law of Congress, the treasury instruction, and 
his own oath of office. He would say, he 
should perform his duty, come what come 
might. 

Here would ensue a pause ; for they say that 
a certain stillness precedes the tempest. The 



REPL Y TO HA YNE. 273 

trumpeter would hold his breath awhile, and 
before all this military array should fall on the 
custom-house, collector, clerks, and all, it is 
very probable some of those composing it 
would request of their gallant commander-in- 
chief to be informed upon a little point of law ; 
for they have doubtless, a just respect for his 
opinions as a lawyer, as well as for his bravery 
as a soldier. They know he has read Black- 
stone and the Constitution, as well as Turenne 
and Vauban. They would ask him, therefore, 
somewhat concerning their rights in this mat- 
ter. They would inquire whether it was not 
somewhat dangerous to resist a law of the 
United States, What would be the nature of 
their offence, they would wish to learn, if they, 
by military force and array, resisted the execu- 
tion in Carolina of a law of the United States, 
and it should turn out, after all, that the 
XayM was constitutional? He would answer, of 
course, treason. No lawyer could give any 
other answer. John Fries, he would tell them, 
had learned that some years ago. How, then, 
they would ask, do you propose to defend us? 
We are not afraid of bullets, but treason has 
a way of taking people off that we do not 
much relish. How do you propose to defend 



274 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

US? " Look at my floating banner," he would 
reply ; " see there the nullifying law ! " 

Is it your opinion, gallant commander, they 
would then say, that, if we should be indicted 
for treason, that same floating banner of yours 
would make a good plea in bar? " South Caro- 
lina is a sovereign State," he would reply. 
That is true ; but would the judge admit our 
plea? "These tariff laws," he would repeat, 
" are unconstitutional, palpably, deliberately, 
dangerously." That may all be so ; but if the 
tribunal should not happen to be of that opin- 
ion, shall we swing for it ? We are ready to 
die for our country, but it is rather an awkward 
business, this dying without touching the 
ground ! After all, that is a sort of hemp tax 
worse than any part of the tariff. 

Mr. President, the honorable gentleman 
would be in a dilemma, like that of another 
great general. He would have a knot before 
him which he could not untie. He must cut it 
with his sword. He must say to his followers, 
" Defend yourselves with your bayonets " ; and 
this is war — civil war. 

Direct collision, therefore, between force and 
force, is the unavoidable result of that remedy 
for the revision of unconstitutional laws which 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 275 

the gentleman contends for. It must happen 
in the very first case to which it is applied. Is 
not this the plain result? To resist by force 
the execution of a law, generally, is treason. 
Can the courts of the United States take notice 
of the indulgence of a State to commit treason ? 
The common saying, that a State cannot com- 
mit treason herself, is nothing to the purpose. 
Can she authorize others to do it ? If John 
Fries had produced an act of Pennsylvania, 
annulling the law of Congress, would it have 
helped his case ? Talk about it as we will, 
these doctrines go the length of revolution. 
They are incompatible with any peaceable ad- 
ministration of the government. They lead 
directly to disunion and civil commotion ; and 
therefore it is, that at their commencement, 
when they are first found to be maintained by 
respectable men, and in a tangible form, I enter 
my public protest against them all. 

The honorable gentleman argues that, if this 
Government be the sole judge of the extent of 
its own powers, whether that right of judging 
be in Congress or the Supreme Court, it equally 
subverts State sovereignty. This the gentle- 
man sees, or thinks he sees, although he cannot 
perceive how the right of judging, in this mat- 



276 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

tef, if left to the exercise of State legislatures, 
has any tendency to subvert the government of 
the Union. The gentleman's opinion may be, 
that the right ought not to have been lodged 
with the General Government ; he may like 
better such a Constitution as we should have 
had under the right of State interference ; but 
I ask him to meet me on the plain matter of 
fact. I ask him to meet me on the Constitu- 
tion itself. I ask him if the power is not found 
there, clearly and visibly found there ? 

But, sir, what is this danger, and what are 
the grounds of it ? Let it be remembered that 
the Constitution of the United States is not 
unalterable. It is to continue in its present 
form no longer than the people who established 
it shall choose to continue it. If they shall be- 
come convinced that they have made an injudi- 
cious or inexpedient partition and distribution 
of power between the State governments and 
the General Government, they can alter that 
distribution at will. 

If any thing be found in the national Consti- 
tution, either by original provision or subse- 
quent interpretation, which ought not to be in 
it, the people "know how to get rid of it. If 
any construction, unacceptable to them, be 



REPL Y TO HA YNE. 277 

established so as to become practically a part 
of the Constitution, they will amend it, at their 
own sovereign pleasure. But while the people 
choose to maintain it as it is, while they are 
satisfied with it, and refuse to change it, who 
has given, or who can give, to the legislatures a 
right to alter it, either by interference, con- 
struction, or otherwise ? Gentlemen do not 
seem to recollect that the people have any 
power to do any thing for themselves. They 
imagine there is no safety for them, any longer 
than they are under the close guardianship of 
the State legislatures. Sir, the people have 
not trusted their safety, in regard to the Gen- 
eral Constitution, to these hands. They have 
required other security, and taken other bonds. 
They have chosen to trust themselves, first, to 
the plain words of the instrument, and to such 
construction as the Government themselves, in 
doubtful cases, should put on their powers, 
under their oaths of office, and subject to their 
responsibility to them, just as the people of a 
State trust to their own governments with a 
similar power. Secondly, they have reposed 
their trust in the efficacy of frequent elections, 
and in their own power to remove their own 
servants and agents whenever they see cause. 



278 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Thirdly, they have reposed trust in the judicial 
power, which, in order that it might be trust- 
worthy, they have made as respectable, as dis- 
interested, and as independent as was practica- 
ble. Fourthly, they have seen fit to rely, in 
case of necessity, or high expediency, on their 
known and admitted power to alter or amend 
the Constitution, peaceably and quietly, when- 
ever experience shall point out defects or im- 
perfections. And, finally, the people of the 
United States have at no time, in no way, 
directly or indirectly, authorized any State leg- 
islature to construe or interpret their high in- 
strument of government ; much less to inter- 
fere, by their own power, to arrest its course 
and operation. 

If, sir, the people in these respects had done 
otherwise than they have done, their Constitu- 
tion could neither have been preserved, nor 
would it have been worth preserving. And if 
its plain provisions shall now be disregarded, 
and these new doctrines interpolated in it, it 
will become as feeble and helpless a being as its 
enemies, whether early or more recent, could 
possibly desire. It will exist in every State 
but as a poor dependent on State permission. 
It must borrow leave to be ; and will be, no 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 279 

longer than State pleasure, or State discretion, 
sees fit to grant the indulgence, and to prolong 
its poor existence. 

But, sir, although there are fears, there are 
hopes also. The people have preserved this, 
their own chosen Constitution, for forty years, 
and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and 
renown grow with its growth, and strengthen 
with its strength. They are now, generally, 
strongly attached to it. Overthrown by direct 
assault, it cannot be ; evaded, undermined, 
NULLIFIED, it will not be, if we, and those who 
shall succeed us here, as agents and representa- 
tives of the people, shall conscientiously and 
vigilantly discharge the two great branches of 
our public trust, faithfully to preserve and 
wisely to administer it. 

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons 
of my dissent to the doctrines which have been 
advanced and maintained. I am conscious of 
having detained you and the Senate much too 
long. I was drawn into the debate with no 
previous deliberation, such as is suited to the 
discussion of so grave and important a subject. 
But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and 
I have not been willing to suppress the utter- 
ance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, 



280 DANIEL llEBSTER. 

even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, 
without expressing, once more my deep con- 
viction, that, since it respects nothing less than 
the union of the States, it is of most vital and 
essential importance to the public happiness. 
I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have 
kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor 
of the whole country, and the preservation of 
our Federal Union. It is to that Union we 
owe our safety at home, and our consideration 
and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that 
we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us 
most proud of our country. That Union we 
reached only by the discipline of our virtues in 
the severe school of adversity. It had its origin 
in the necessities of disordered finance, pros- 
trate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its 
benign influences, these great interests im- 
mediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang 
forth with newness of life. Every year of its 
duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its 
utility and its blessings ; and although our ter- 
ritor}' has stretched out wider and wider, and 
our population spread farther and farther, 
they have not outrun its protection or its bene- 
fits. It has been to us all a copious fountain 
of national, social, and personal happiness. 



REPLY TO HAYNE. 251 

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond 
the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the 
dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed 
the chances of preserving liberty when the 
bonds that unite us together shall be broken 
asunder. I have not accustomed myself to 
hang over the precipice of disunion, to see 
whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the 
depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard 
him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Gov- 
ernment, whose thoughts should be mainly bent 
on considering, not how the Union may be best 
preserved, but how tolerable might be the condi- 
tion of the people when it should be broken up 
and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have 
high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out 
before us, for us and our children. Beyond 
that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God 
grant that in my day at least that curtain may 
not rise ! God grant that on my vision never 
may be opened what lies behind ! When my 
eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time 
the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining 
on the broken and dishonored fragments of a 
once glorious Union ; on States dissevered, dis- 
cordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil 
feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal 



282 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering 
glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of 
the Republic, now known and honored through- 
out the earth, still full high advanced, its arms 
and trophies streaming in their original lustre, 
not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star 
obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miser- 
able interrogotary as " What is all this worth ? " 
nor those other words of delusion and folly, 
" Liberty first and Union afterward " ; but 
everywhere, spread all over in characters of 
living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as 
they float over the sea and over the land, and 
in every wind under the whole heavens, that 
other sentiment, dear to every true American 
heart, — Liberty and Union, now and forever, 
one and inseparable ! 



PART II. 



V. 
THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE 



V. 

THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

Negro slavery was introduced into all the 
English colonies of North America as a custom, 
and not under any warrant of law. The en- 
slavement of the negro race was simply a mat- 
ter against which no white person chose to 
enter a protest, or make resistance, while the 
negroes themselves were powerless to resist or 
even protest. In due course of time laws were 
passed by the Colonial Assemblies to protect 
property in negroes, while the home govern- 
ment, to the very last, actively protected and 
encouraged the slave trade to the colonies. 
Negro slavery in all the colonies had thus 
passed from custom to law before the American 
Revolution broke out ; and the course of the 
Revolution itself had little or no effect on the 
system. 



4 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

From the beginning, it was evident that the 
course of slavery in the two sections, North and 
South, was to be altogether divergent. In the 
colder North, the dominant race found it easier 
to work than to compel negroes to work: in 
the warmer South, the case was exactly re- 
versed. At the close of the Revolution, Massa- 
chusetts led the way in an abolition of slavery, 
which was followed gradually by the other 
States north of Virginia; and in 1787 the ordi- 
nance of Congress organizing the Northwest 
Territory made all the future States north of 
the Ohio free States. " Mason and Dixon's 
line " and the Ohio River thus seemed, in 1790, 
to be the natural boundary between the free 
and the slave States. 

Up to this point the white race in the two 
sections had dealt with slavery by methods 
which were simply divergent, not antagonistic. 
It was true that the percentage of slaves in the 
total population had been very rapidly decreas- 
ing in the North and not in the South, and that 
the gradual abolition of slavery was proceeding 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 5 

in the North alone, and that with increasing 
rapidity. But there was no positive evidence 
that the South was bulwarked in favor of slav- 
ery ; there was no certainty but that the South 
would in its turn and in due time come to the 
point which the North had already reached, 
and begin its own abolition of slaver^\ The 
language of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, 
Henry, and Mason, in regard to the evils or the 
wickedness of the system of slavery, was too 
strong to be heard with patience in the South 
of after years ; and in this section it seems to 
have been true, that those who thought at all 
upon the subject hoped sincerely for the grad- 
ual abolition of slavery in the South. The 
hope, indeed, was rather a sentiment than 
a purpose, but there seems to have been no 
good reason, before 1793, why the sentiment 
should not finally develop into a purpose. 

All this was permanently changed, and the 
slavery policy of the South was made antagonis- 
tic to, and not merely divergent from, that of 
the North, by the invention of Whitney's saw 



6 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

gin for cleansing cotton in 1793. It had been 
known, before that year, that cotton could be 
cultivated in the South, but its cultivation was 
made unprofitable, and checked by the labor 
required to separate the seeds from the cotton. 
Whitney's invention increased the efficiency of 
this labor hundreds of times, and it became 
evident at once that the South enjoyed a prac- 
tical monopoly of the production of cotton. 
The effect on the slavery policy of the South 
was immediate and unhappy. Since 1865, it 
has been found that the cotton monopoly of 
the South is even more complete under a free 
than under a slave labor system, but mere 
theory could never have convinced the South- 
ern people that such would be the case. Their 
whole prosperity hinged on one product ; they 
began its cultivation under slave labor ; and the 
belief that labor and prosperity were equally 
dependent on the enslavement of the laboring 
race very soon made the dominant race active 
defenders of slavery. From that time the sys- 
tem in the ^outh was one of slowly but steadily 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. J 

increasing rigor, until, just before i860, its last 
development took the form of legal enactments 
for the re-enslavement of free negroes, in de- 
fault of their leaving the State in which they 
resided. Parallel with this increase of rigor, 
there was a steady change in the character of 
the system. It tended very steadily to lose its 
original patriarchal character, and take the 
aspect of a purely commercial speculation. 
After 1850, the commercial aspect began to be 
the rule in the black belt of the Gulf States. 
The plantation knew only the overseer ; so 
many slaves died to so many bales of cotton ; 
and the slave population began to lose all 
human connection with the dominant race. 

The acquisition of Louisiana in 1803 more 
than doubled the area of the United States, 
and far more than doubled the area of the slave 
system. Slavery had been introduced into 
Louisiana, as usual, by custom, and had then 
been sanctioned by Spanish and French law. 
It is true that Congress did not forbid slavery 
in the new territory of Louisiana ; but Congress 



8 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

did even worse than this; under the guise of 
forbidding the importation of slaves into Louis- 
iana, by the act of March 26, 1804, organizing 
the territory, the phrase '' except by a citizen 
of the United States, removing into said terri- 
tory for actual settlement, and being at the 
time of such removal bona fide owner of such 
slave or slaves, " impliedly legitimated the 
domestic slave trade to Louisiana, and legalized 
slavery wherever population should extend 
between the Mississippi and the Rocky Moun- 
tains. The Congress of 1803-05, which passed 
the act, should rightfully bear the responsibility 
for all the subsequent growth of slavery, and 
for all the difficulties in which it involved the 
South and the country. 

There were but two centres of population in 
Louisiana, New Orleans and St. Louis. When 
the southern district, around New Orleans, ap- 
plied for admission as the slave State of Louis- 
iana, there seems to have been no surprise or 
opposition on this score ; the Federalist oppo- 
sition to the admission is exactly represented 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 9 

by Quincy's speech in the first volume. When 
the northern district, around St. Louis, applied 
for admission as the slave State of Missouri, 
the inevitable consequences of the act of 1804 
became evident for the first time, and all the 
Northern States united to resist the admission. 
The North controlled the House of Representa- 
tives, and the South the Senate ; and, after a 
severe parliamentary struggle, the two bodies 
united in the compromise of 1820. By its 
terms Missouri was admitted as a slave State, 
and slavery was forever forbidden in the rest of 
Louisiana Territory, north of latitude 36° 30' 
(the line of the southerly boundary of Missouri). 
The instinct of this first struggle against slavery 
extension seems to have been much the same 
as that of 1846-60 — the realization that a per- 
mission to introduce slavery by custom into the 
Territories meant the formation of slave States 
exclusively, the restriction of the free States to 
the district between the Mississippi and the At- 
lantic, and the final conversion of the mass of 
the United States to a policy of enslavement 



lO THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

of labor. But, on the surface, it was so entirely 
a struggle for the balance of power between 
the two sections, that it has not seemed worth 
while to introduce any of the few reported 
speeches of the time. The topic is more fully 
and fairly discussed in the subsequent debates 
on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

In 1830 William Lloyd Garrison, a Boston 
printer, opened the real anti-slavery struggle. 
Up to this time the anti-slavery sentiment, 
North and South, had been content with the 
notion of " gradual abolition," with the hope 
that the South would, in some yet unsuspected 
manner, be brought to the Northern policy. 
This had been supplemented, to some extent, 
by the colonization society for colonizing ne- 
groes on the west coast of Africa, which had 
two aspects: at the South it was the means 
of ridding the country of the free negro popu- 
lation ; at the North it was a means of mitigat- 
ing, perhaps of gradually abolishing, slavery. 
Garrison, through his newspaper, the Liberator^ 
called for " immediate abolition " of slavery, 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. II 

for the conversion of anti-slavery sentiment 
into anti-slavery purpose. This was followed 
by the organization of his adherents into the 
American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and the 
active dissemination of the immediate abolition 
principle by tracts, newspapers, and lecturers. 
The anti-slavery struggle thus begun, never 
ceased until, in 1865, the Liberator ceased to be 
published, with the final abolition of slavery. 
In its inception and in all its development the 
movement was a distinct product of the dem- 
ocratic spirit. It would not have been possible 
in 1790, or in 18 10, or in 1820. The man came 
with the hour ; and every new mile of railroad or 
telegraph, every new district open to population, 
every new influence toward the growth of de- 
mocracy, broadened the power as well as the field 
of the abolition movement. It was but the 
deepening, the application to an enslaved race 
of laborers, of the work which Jeffersonian de- 
mocracy had done, to remove the infinitely less 
grievous restraints upon the white laborer thirty 
year before. It could never have been begun 



12 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

until individualism at the North had advanced so 
far that there was a reserve force of mind'' ready 
to reject all the influences of heredity and cus- 
tom upon thought. Outside of religion there 
was no force so strong at the North as the rev- 
erence for the Constitution; it was significant 
of the growth of individualism, as well as of 
the anti-slavery sentiment, that Garrison could 
safely begin his work with the declaration that 
the Constitution itself was " a league with death 
and a covenant with hell." 

The Garrisonian programme would undoubt- 
edly have been considered highly objectionable 
by the South, even under the comparatively 
colorless slavery policy of 1790. Under the 
conditions to which cotton culture had ad- 
vanced in 1830, it seemed to the South nothing 
less than a proposal to destroy, root and branch, 
the whole industry of that section, and it was 
received with corresponding indignation. Gar- 
risonian abolitionists were taken and regarded 
as public enemies, and rewards were even of- 
fered for their capture. The germ of abolition- 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 1 3 

ism in the Border States found a new and ag- 
gressive public sentiment arrayed against it ; 
and an attempt to introduce gradual abolition 
in Virginia in 1832-33 was hopelessly defeated. 
The new question was even carried into Con- 
gress. A bill to prohibit the transportation of 
abolition documents by the Post-Office de- 
partment was introduced, taken far enough to 
put leading men of both parties on the record, 
and then dropped. Petitions for the abolition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia were met 
by rules requiring the reference of such peti- 
tions without reading or action ; but this only 
increased the number of petitions, by providing 
a new grievance to be petitioned against, and 
in 1842 the *' gag rule " was rescinded. Thence- 
forth the pro-slavery members of Congress could 
do nothing, and could only become more ex- 
asperated under a system of passive resistance. 
Even at the North, indifferent or politically 
hostile as it had hitherto shown itself to the ex- 
pansion of slavery, the new doctrines were re- 
ceived with 3^n outburst of anger which seems 



14 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

to have been primarily a revulsion against their 
unheard of individualism. If nothing, which 
had been the object of unquestioning popular 
reverence, from the Constitution down or up to 
the church organizations, was to be sacred 
against the criticism of the Garrisonians, it was 
certain that the innovators must submit for a 
time to a general proscription. Thus the Gar- 
risonians were ostracised socially, and became 
the Ishmaelites of politics. Their meetings 
were broken up by mobs, their halls were des- 
troyed, their schools were attacked by all the 
machinery of society and legislation, their print- 
ing presses were silenced by force or fraud, and 
their lecturers came to feel that they had not 
done their work with efficiency if a meeting 
passed without the throwing of stones or eggs 
at the building or the orators. It was, of course, 
inevitable that such a process should bring 
strong minds to the aid of the Garrisonians, at 
first from sympathy with persecuted individual- 
ism, and finally from sympathy with the cause 
itself ; and in th-i^ way Garrisonianism was in a 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. I 5 

great measure relieved from open mob violence 
about 1840, though it never escaped it alto- 
gether until abolition meetings ceased to be nec- 
essary. One of the first and greatest reinforce- 
ments was the appearance of Wendell Phillips, 
whose speech at Faneuil Hall in 1837 was one 
of the first tokens of a serious break in the 
hitherto almost unanimous public opinion 
against Garrisonianism. Lovejoy, a Western 
anti-slavery preacher and editor, who had been 
driven from one place to another in Missouri 
and Illinois, had finally settled at Alton, and 
was there shot to death while defending his 
printing press against a mob. At a public 
meeting in Faneuil Hall, the Attorney-General 
of Massachusetts, James T. Austin, expressing 
what was doubtless the general sentiment of 
the time as to such individual insurrection 
against pronounced public opinion, compared 
the Alton mob to the Boston " tea-party," and 
declared that Lovejoy, " presumptuous and im- 
prudent," had " died as the fool dieth." Phil- 
lips, an almost unknown man, took the stand, 



1 6 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

and answered in the speech which opens this 
volume. A more powerful reinforcement could 
hardly have been looked for ; the cause which 
could find such a defender was henceforth to be 
feared rather than despised. To the day of his 
death he was, fully as much as Garrison, the in- 
carnation of the anti-slavery spirit. For this 
reason his address on the Philosophy of the 
Abolition Movement, in 1853, has been assigned 
a place as representing fully the abolition side 
of the question, just before it was overshadowed 
by the rise of the Republican party, which op- 
posed only the extension of slavery to the 
territories. 

The history of the sudden development of the 
anti-slavery struggle in 1845 ^"<i ^^e following 
years, is largely given in the speeches which have 
been selected to illustrate it. The admission of 
Texas to the Union in 1845, and the war with 
Mexico which followed it, resulted in the ac- 
quisition of a vast amount of new territory by 
the United States. From the first suggestion 
of such an acquisition, the Wilmot proviso (so- 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 1/ 

called from David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, who 
introduced it in Congress), that slavery should 
be prohibited in the new territory, was persist- 
ently offered as an amendment to every bill 
appropriating money for the purchase of terri- 
tory from Mexico. It was passed by the House 
of Representatives, but was balked in the 
Senate ; and the purchase was finally made 
.without any proviso. When the territory came 
to be organized, the old question came up 
again : the Wilmot proviso was offered as an 
amendment. As the territory was now in the 
possession of the United States, and as it had 
been acquired in a war whose support had been 
much more cordial at the South than at the 
North, the attempt to add the Wilmot proviso 
to the territorial organization raised the South- 
ern opposition to an intensity which it had not 
known before. Fuel was added to the flame 
by the application of California, whose popula- 
tion had been enormously increased by the dis- 
covery of gold within her limits, for admission 
as a free State, If New Mexico should do the 



1 8 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

same, as was probable, the Wilmot proviso 
would be practically in force throughout the best 
portion of the Mexican acquisition. The two 
sections were now so strong and so determined 
that compromise of any kind was far more diffi- 
cult than in 1820 ; and it was not easy to recon- 
cile or compromise the southern demand that 
slavery should be permitted, and the northern 
demand that slavery should be forbidden, to 
enter the new territories. 

In the meantime, the Presidential election of 
1848 had come and gone. It had been marked 
by the appearance of a new party, the Free 
Soilers, an event which was at first extremely 
embarrassing to the managers of both the 
Democratic and Whig parties. On the one 
hand, the northern and southern sections of the 
Whig party had always been very loosely 
joined together, and the slender tie was en- 
dangered by the least admission of the slavery 
issue. On the other hand, while the Democra- 
tic national organization had always been more 
perfect, its northern section had always been 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 1 9 

much more inclined to active anti-slavery work 
thaij the northern Whigs. Its organ, the Dem- 
ocratic Review, habitually spoke of the slaves as 
" our black brethren " ; and a long catalogue 
could be made of leaders like Chase, Hale, Wil- 
mot, Bryant, and Leggett, whose democracy 
was broad enough to include the negro. To 
both parties, therefore, the situation was ex- 
tremely hazardous. The Whigs had less to 
fear, but were able to resist less pressure. 
The Democrats were more united, but were 
called upon to meet a greater danger. In the 
end, the Whigs did nothing; their two sections 
drew further apart ; and the Presidential elec- 
tion of 1852 only made it evident that the na- 
tional Whig party was no longer in existence. 
The Democratic managers evolved, as a solu- 
tion of their problem, the new doctrine of 
" popular sovereignty," which Calhoun re- 
baptized " squatter sovereignty." They as- 
serted as the true Democratic doctrine, that 
the question of slavery or freedom was to be 
left for decision of the people of the territory 



20 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

itself. To the mass of northern Democrats, 
this doctrine was taking enough to cover over 
the essential nature of the struggle ; the more 
democratic leaders of the northern Democracy 
were driven off into the Free-Soil party ; and 
Douglas, the champion of " popular sov- 
ereignty," became the leading Democrat of 
the North. 

Clay had re-entered the Senate in 1849, for 
the purpose of compromising the sectional dififi- 
culties as he had compromised those of 1820 
and of 1833. His speech, as given, will show 
something of his motives ; his success resulted 
in the "compromise of 1850." By its terms, 
California was admitted as a free State ; the 
slave trade, but not slavery, was prohibited in 
the District of Columbia ; a more stringent 
fugitive slave law was enacted ; Texas was paid 
$10,000,000 for certain claims to the Territory 
of New Mexico ; and the Territories of Utah 
and New Mexico, covering the Mexican ac- 
quisition outside of California, were organized 
without mentioning slavery. The last-named 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 21 

feature was carefully designed to please all im- 
portant factions. It could be represented to 
the Webster Whigs that slavery was excluded 
from the Territories named by the operation of 
natural laws; to the Clay Whigs that slavery 
had already been excluded by Mexican law 
which survived the cession ; to the northern 
Democrats, that the compromise was a formal 
endorsement of the great principle of popular 
sovereignty ; and to the" southern Democrats 
that it was a repudiation of the Wilmot proviso. 
In the end, the essence of the success went to 
the last-named party, for the legislatures of 
the two territories established slavery, and no 
bill to veto their action could pass both Houses 
of Congress until after 1861. 

The Supreme Court had already decided that 
Congress had exclusive power to enforce the 
fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, though 
the fugitive slave law of 1793 had given a con- 
current authority of execution to State officers. 
The law of 1850, carrying the Supreme Court's 
decision further, gave the execution of the law 



22 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

to United States officers, and refused the 
accused a hearing. Its execution at the North 
was therefore the occasion of a profound excite- 
ment and horror. Cases of inhuman cruelty, 
and of false accusation to which no defence was 
permitted, were multiplied until a practical 
nullification of the law, in the form of " personal 
liberty laws," securing a hearing for the accused 
before State magistrates, was forced by public 
opinion upon the legislature of the exposed 
northern States. Before the excitement had 
come to a head, the Whig. convention of 1852 
met and endorsed the compromise of 1850 " in 
all its parts." Overwhelmed in the election 
which followed, the Whig party was popularly 
said to have " died of an attempt to swallow the 
fugitive-slave law " ; it would have been more 
correct to have said that the southern section 
of the party had deserted in a body and gone 
over to the Democratic party. National poli- 
tics were thus left in an entirely anomalous con- 
dition. The Democratic party was omnipotent 
at the South, though it was afterward opposed 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 23 

feebly by the American (or " Know Nothing ") 
organization, and was generally successful at 
the North, though it was still met by the 
Northern Whigs with vigorous opposition. 
Such a state of affairs was not calculated to 
satisfy thinking men ; and this period seems 
to have been one in which very few thinking 
men of any party were at all satisfied with 
their party positions. 

This was the hazardous situation into which 
the Democratic managers chose to thrust one 
of the most momentous pieces of legislation 
in our political history — the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill. The responsibility for it is clearly on the 
shoulders of Stephen A. Douglas. The over- 
land travel to the Pacific coast had made it 
necessary to remove the Indian title to Kansas 
and Nebraska, and to organize them as Ter- 
ritories, in order to afford protection to emi- 
grants ; and Douglas, chairman of the Senate 
committee on Territories, introduced a bill for 
such organization in January, 1854. Both 
these prospective Territories had been made 



24 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

free soil forever by the compromise of 1820; 
the question of slavery had been settled, so 
far as they were concerned ; but Douglas con- 
sented, after a show of opposition, to reopen 
Pandora's box. His original bill did not abro- 
gate the Missouri compromise, and there seems 
to have been no general Southern demand that 
it should do so. But Douglas had become 
intoxicated by the unexpected success of his 
" popular sovereignty " make-shift in regard 
to the Territories of 1850; and a notice of 
an amendment to be offered by a southern 
senator, abrogating the Missouri compromise, 
was threat or excuse sufficient to bring him 
to withdraw the bill. A week later, it was re- 
introduced with the addition of " popular 
sovereignty ": all questions pertaining to slavery 
in these Territories, and in the States to be 
formed from them, were to be left to the de- 
cision of the people, through their representa- 
tives; and the Missouri compromise of 1820 
was declared "inoperative and void," as in- 
consistent with the principles of the territorial 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 2$ 

legislation of 1850. It must be remembered 
that the "non-intervention " of 1850 had been 
confessedly based on no constitutional prin- 
ciple whatever, but was purely a matter of ex- 
pediency; and that "non-intervention" in 
Utah and New Mexico was no more incon- 
sistent with the prohibition of slavery in 
Kansas and Nebraska than " non-intervention " 
in the Southwest Territory, sixty years before, 
had been inconsistent with the prohibition of 
slavery in the Northwest Territory. Whether 
Douglas is to be considered as too scrupulous, 
or too timid, or too willing to be terrified, it is 
certain that his action was unnecessary. 

After a struggle of some months, the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill became law. The Missouri com- 
promise was abrogated, and the question of the 
extension of slavery to the territories was adrift 
again, never to be got rid of except through the 
abolition of slavery itself by war. The demands 
of the South had now come fully abreast with 
the proposal of Douglas : that slavery should 
hsive per miss W7i to enter all the Territories, if it 



26 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

could. The opponents of the extension of 
slavery, at first under the name of " Anti- 
Nebraska men," then of the Republican party, 
carried the elections for representatives in Con- 
gress in i854-'55, and narrowly missed carrying 
the Presidential election of 1856. The percent- 
age of Democratic losses in the congressional 
districts of the North was sufficient to leave 
Douglas with hardly any supporters in Congress 
from his own section. The Democratic party 
was converted at once into a solid South, with 
a northern attachment of popular votes which 
was not sufficient to control very many Con- 
gressmen or electoral votes. 

Immigration into Kansas was organized at 
once by leading men of the two sections, with 
the common design of securing a majority of 
the voters of the territory and applying " popu- 
lar sovereignty " for or against slavery. The 
first sudden inroad of Missouri intruders was 
successful in securing a pro-slavery legislature 
and laws ; but within two years the stream of 
free-State immigration had become so powerful. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 2/ 

in spite of murder, outrage, and open civil war, 
that it was very evident that Kansas was to be 
a free-State. Its expiring territorial legislature 
endeavored to outwit its constituents by apply- 
ing for admission as a slave State, under the 
Lecompton constitution ; but the Douglas 
Democrats could not support the attempt, and 
it was defeated. Kansas, however, remained a 
territory until 1861. 

The cruelties of this Kansas episode could 
not but be reflected in the feelings of the two 
sections and in Congress. In the former it 
showed too plainly that the divergence of the 
two sections, indicated in Calhoun's speech of 
1850, had widened to an absolute separation in 
thought, feeling, and purpose. In the latter 
the debates assumed a virulence which is illus- 
trated by the speeches on the Sumner assault. 
The current of events had at least carried the 
sections far enough apart to give striking dis- 
tance ; and the excuse for action was supplied 
by the Dred Scott decision in 1857. 

Dred Scott, a Missouri slave, claiming to be 



28 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

a free man under the Missouri compromise of 
1820, had sued his master, and the case had 
reached the Supreme Court. A majority of the 
justices agreed in dismissing the suit ; but, as 
nearly every justice filed an opinion, and as 
nearly every opinion disagreed with the other 
opinions on one or more points, it is not easy 
to see what else is covered by the decision. 
Nevertheless, the opinion of the Chief Justice, 
Roger B. Taney, attracted general attention by 
the strength of its argument and the character 
of its views. It asserted, in brief, that no slave 
could become a citizen of the United States, 
even by enfranchisement or State law ; that the 
prohibition of slavery by the Missouri compro- 
mise of 1820 was unconstitutional and void; 
that the Constitution recognized property in 
slaves, and was framed for the protection of 
property ; that Congress had no rights or duties 
in the territories but such as were granted or 
imposed by the Constitution ; and that, there- 
fore, Congress was bound not merely not to for- 
bid slavery, but to actively protect slavery in 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 2g 

the Territories. This was just the ground 
which had always been held by Calhoun, though 
the South had not supported him in* it. Now 
the South, rejecting Douglas and his " popular 
sovereignty," was united in its devotion to the 
decision of the Supreme Court, and called upon 
the North to yield unhesitating obedience to 
that body which Webster in 1830 had styled 
the ultimate arbiter of constitutional questions. 
This, it was evident, could never be. No re- 
spectable authority at the North pretended to 
uphold the keystone of Taney's argument, that 
slaves were regarded as property by the Con- 
stitution. On the contrary, it was agreed every- 
where by those whose opinions were looked to 
with respect, that slaves were regarded by the 
Constitution as " persons held to service or 
labor" under the laws of the State alone ; and 
that the laws of the State could not give such 
persons a fictitious legal character outside of 
the State's jurisdiction. Even the Douglas 
Democrats, who expressed a willingness to yield 
to the Supreme Court's decision, did not pro- 
fess to uphold Taney's share in it. 



30 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

As the Presidential election of i860 drew 
near, the evidences of separation became more 
manifest. ' The absorption of northern Demo- 
crats into the Republican party increased until 
Douglas, in 1858, narrowly escaped defeat in 
his contest with Lincoln for a re-election to the 
Senate from Illinois. In i860 the Republicans 
nominated Lincoln for the Presidency on a 
platform demanding prohibition of slavery in 
the Territories. The southern delegates seceded 
from the Democratic convention, and nomi- 
nated Breckenridge, on a platform demanding 
congressional protection of slavery in the Terri- 
tories. The remainder of the Democratic con- 
vention nominated Douglas, with a declaration 
of its willingness to submit to the decision of 
the Supreme Court on questions of constitu- 
tional law. The remnants of the former Whig 
and American parties, under the name of the 
Constitutional Union party, nominated Bell 
without any declaration of principles. Lincoln 
received a majority of the electoral votes, and 
became President. His popular vote was a 
plurality. 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 3I 

Seward's address on the " Irrepressible Con- 
flict," which closes this volume, is representa- 
tive of the division between the two sections, 
as it stood just before the actual shock of con- 
flict. Labor systems are delicate things ; and 
that which the South had adopted, of enslaving 
the laboring class, was one whose influence 
could not help being universal and aggressive. 
Every form of energy and prosperity which 
tended to advance a citizen into the class of 
representative rulers tended also to make him a 
slave owner, and to shackle his official policy 
and purposes with considerations inseparable 
from his heavy personal interests. Men might 
divide on other questions at the South ; but on 
this question of slavery the action of the indi- 
vidual had to follow the decisions of a majority 
which, by the influence of ambitious aspirants 
for the lead, was continually becoming more 
aggressive. In constitutional countries, defec- 
tions to the minority are a steady check upon 
an aggressive majority ; but the southern ma- 
jority was a steam engine without a safety valve. 



32 THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

In this sense Seward and Lincoln, in 1858, were 
correct ; the labor system of the South was not 
only a menace to the whole country, but one 
which could neither decrease nor stand still. It 
was intolerable by the laws of its being ; and it 
could be got rid of only by allowing a peaceable 
secession, or by abolishing it through war. The 
material prosperity which has followed the adop- 
tion of the latter alternative, apart from the 
moral aspects of the case, is enough to show 
that the South has gained more than all that 
slavery lost. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(BORN 181I, DIED 1884.) 



ON THE MURDER OF LOVE JOY ; FANEUIL HALL, 
BOSTON, DECEMBER 8, 1837. 

Mr. Chairman : 

We have met for the freest discussion of 
these resolutions, and the events which gave rise 
to them. [Cries of "Question," " Hear him," 
" Go on," " No gagging," etc.] I hope I shall 
be permitted to express my surprise at the 
sentiments of the last speaker, surprise not only 
at such sentiments from such a man, but at the 
applause they have received within these walls. 
A comparison has been drawn between the 
events of the Revolution and the tragedy at 
Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in 
Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to 
tax the colonies, and we have heard the mob at 
Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, com- 
pared to those patriot fathers who threw the 
33 



34 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tea overboard ! Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil 
Hall doctrine? [" No, no."] The mob at Al- 
ton were met to wrest from a citizen his just 
rights — met to resist the laws. We have been 
told that our fathers did the same ; and the 
glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has 
been thrown over the mobs of our day. To 
make out their title to such defence, the gentle- 
man says that the British Parliament had a right 
to tax these colonies. It is manifest that, without 
this, his parallel falls to the ground, for Lovejoy 
had stationed himself within constitutional bul- 
warks. He was not only defending the free- 
dom of the press, but he was under his own 
roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil au- 
thority. The men who assailed him went 
against and over the laws. The mob, as the 
gentleman terms it — mob, forsooth ! certainly 
we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvellously 
patient generation ! — the "orderly mob" which 
assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea, 
were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal en- 
actions. Shame on the American who calls the 
tea tax and stamp act laws ! Our fathers re- 
sisted, not the King's prerogative, but the 
King's usurpation. To find any other account, 
you must read our Revolutionary history up- 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 35 

side down. Our State archives are loaded 
with arguments of John Adams to prove the 
taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitu- 
tional — beyond its power. It was not until 
this was made out that the men of New Eng- 
land rushed to arms. The arguments of the 
Council Chamber and the House of Represen- 
tatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. 
To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a 
precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we 
ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their 
memory. The difference between the excite- 
ments of those days and our own, which the 
gentleman in kindness to the latter has over- 
looked, is simply this : the men of that day 
went for the right, as secured by the laws. 
They were the people rising to sustain the laws 
and constitution of the Province. The rioters 
of our days go for their own wills, right or 
wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay 
down principles which place the murderers of 
Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, 
with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pic- 
tured lips [pointing to the portraits in the 
Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke 
the recreant American — the slanderer of the 
dead. The gentleman said that he should sink 



^6 WENDELL PHLLLLPS. 

into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the 
principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the 
sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated 
by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of 
patriots, the earth should have yawned and 
swallowed him up. 

[By this time, the uproar in the Hall had risen so high that 
the speech was suspended for a short time. Applause and 
counter applause, cries of " Take that back," " Make him 
take back recreant," " He sha'n't go on till he takes it back," 
and counter cries of " Phillips or nobody," continued until the 
pleadings of well-known citizens had somewhat restored order, 
when Mr, Phillips resumed.] 

Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words. 
Surely the Attorney-General, so long and so 
well known here, needs not the aid of your 
hisses against one so young as I am — my voice 
never before heard within these walls ! * * * 

I must find some fault with the statement 
which has been made of the events at Al- 
ton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and 
his friends did not appeal to the executive — 
trust their defence to the police of the city ? It 
has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged 
excitement, the men within the building pro- 
voked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course 
of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, 
sir, that they did act with the approbation and 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. yj 

sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there 
was no executive to appeal to for protection. 
The Mayor acknowledged that he could not 
protect them. They asked him if it was law- 
ful for them to defend themselves. He told 
them it was, and sanctioned their assembling in 
arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob ; 
they were not merely citizens defending their 
own property ; they were in some sense the 
posse coinitatus, adopted for the occasion into 
the police of the city, acting under the order 
of a magistrate. It was civil authority resist- 
ing lawless violence. Where, then, was the 
imprudence ? Is the doctrine to be sustained 
here that it is impriident for men to aid magis- 
trates in executing the laws ? 

Men are continually asking each other. Had 
Lovejoy a right to resist ? Sir, I protest 
against the question instead of answering it. 
Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they mean. 
He did not throw himself back on the natural 
right of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, 
and let slip the dogs of civil war, careless of the 
horrors which would follow. Sir, as I under- 
stand this affair, it was not an individual pro- 
tecting his property ; it was not one body of 
armed men resisting another, and making the 



38 WENDELL PHILLLPS. 

streets of a peaceful city run blood with their 
contentions. It did not bring back the scenes 
in some old Italian cities, where family met 
family, and faction met faction, and mutually 
trampled the laws under foot. No ! the men 
in that house were regularly enrolled, under the 
sanction of the Mayor, There being no militia 
in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with 
the approbation of the Mayor. These relieved 
each other every other night. About thirty 
men were in arms on the night of the sixth, 
when the press was landed. The next evening, 
it was not thought necessary to summon more 
than half that number ; among these was 
Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you perceive, sir, 
the police of the city resisting rioters — civil 
government breasting itself to the shock of law- 
less men. 

Here is no question about the right of self- 
defence. It is in fact simply this: Has the 
civil magistrate a right to put down a riot? 

Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy 
existed at Alton from the commencement of 
these disputes. Not at all. " No one of us," 
says an eyewitness and a comrade of LoVejoy, 
" has taken up arms during these disturbances 
but at the command of the Mayor." Anarchy 



THE yrURDER OF LOVE/0 Y. 39 

did not settle down on that devoted city till 
Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, 
represented in his person, sustained itself 
against its foes. When he fell, civil authority 
was trampled under foot. He had " planted 
himself on his constitutional rights," — appealed 
to the laws, — claimed the protection of the 
civil authority, — taken refuge under " the broad 
shield of the Constitution. When through that 
he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer 
in a common catastrophe." He took refuge 
under the banner of liberty — amid its folds ; 
and when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, 
the emblem of free institutions, around which 
cluster so many heart-stirring memories, were 
blotted out in the martyr's blood. 

It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, 
that Lovejoy or his comrades fired first. This 
\S> denied by those who have the best means of 
knowing. Guns were first fired by the mob. 
After being twice fired on, those within the 
building consulted together and deliberately 
returned the fire. But suppose they did fire 
first. They had a right so to do ; not only the 
right which every citizen has to defend himself, 
but the further right which every civil officer 
has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired 



40 WENDELL PHLLLLPS. 

the first gun, it would not lessen his claim to 
our sympathy, or destroy his title to be consid- 
ered a martyr in defence of a free press. The 
question now is. Did he act within the constitu- 
tion and the laws? The men who fell in State 
Street, on the 5th of March, 1770, did more 
than Lovejoy is charged with. They were the 
first assailants upon some slight quarrel, they 
pelted the troops with every missile within 
reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy 
with which Hancock and Warren hallowed their 
memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in 
the cause of American liberty? If, sir, I had 
adopted what are called Peace principles, I 
might lament the circumstances of this case. 
But all you who believe as I do, in the right 
and duty of magistrates to execute the laws, 
join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the 
conduct of those who assemble year after year 
on the 4th of July to fight over the battles of 
the Revolution, and yet " damn with faint 
praise " or load with obloquy, the memory of 
this man who shed his blood in defence of life, 
liberty, property, and the freedom of the press! 
Throughout that terrible night I find nothing 
to regret but this, that, within the limits of our 
country, civil authority should have been so pros- 



THE MURDER OF LOVE JOY. 4 1 

trated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own 
defence, and to arm in vain. The gentleman 
says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent 
— he " died as the fool dieth." And a rever- 
end clergyman of the city tells us that no citi- 
zen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable 
to the community ! If any mob follows such 
publication, on /wn rests its guilt. He must 
wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and 
agree with him ! This libel on liberty goes on 
to say that the want of right to speak as we 
think is an evil inseparable from republican in- 
stitutions ! If this be so, what are they worth? 
Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where 
one knows what he may publish and what he 
may not, rather than the tyranny of this many- 
headed monster, the mob, where we know not 
what we may do or say, till some fellow-citizen 
has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life. 
This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for 
the abuses of the press, not the law, but the 
dread of a mob. By so doing, it deprives not 
only the individual and the minority of their 
rights, but the majority also, since the expres- 
sion of their opinion may sometime provoke 
disturbances from the minority. A few men 
may make a mob as well as many. The major- 



42 WENDELL PHLLLIPS. 

ity then, have no right, as Christian men, to 
utter tlieir sentiments, if by any possibility it 
may lead to a mob! Shades of Hugh Peters 
and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits! 

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press ! 
Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful ? 
Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the 
want of it change heroic self-devotion to im- 
prudence ? Was Hampden imprudent when he 
drew the sword and threw away the scabbard ? 
Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuc- 
cessful. After a short exile, the race he hated 
sat again upon the throne. 

Imagine yourself present when the first news 
of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England 
town. The tale would have run thus: "The 
patriots are routed, — the redcoats victorious, — 
Warren lies dead upon the field." With what 
scorn would that Toi'y have been received, who 
should have charged Warren with imprudence ! 
who should have said that, bred a physician, 
he was " out of place " in that battle, and "died 
ai5 \.h.Q fool diet hy How would the intimation 
have been received, that Warren and his asso- 
ciates should have merited a better time ? But 
if success be indeed the only criterion of pru- 
dence, Respicc finem, — wait till the end! 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY. 43 

Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the 
press on American ground ! Is the assertion of 
such freedom before the age ? So much before 
the age as to leave one no right to make it 
because it displeases the community? Who in- 
vents this libel on his country ? It is this very 
thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. 
The disputed right which provoked the Revo- 
lution — taxation without representation — is far 
beneath that for which he died. [Here there 
was a general expression of strong disapproba- 
tion.] One word, gentlemen. As much as 
thought is better than money, so much is the 
cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a 
mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered 
in this hall when the King did but touch his 
pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant elo- 
quence had England offered to put a gag upon 
his lips. The question that stirred the Revolu- 
tion touched our civil interests. This concerns 
us not only as citizens, but as immortal beings. 
Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, 
are not only the voice of the statesman, but 
the instructions of the pulpit and the progress 
of our faith. 

The clergy, " marvellously out of place " 
where free speech is battled for — liberty of 



44 WENDELL PHLLLLPS. 

speech on national sins ! Does the gentleman 
remember that freedom to preach was first 
gained, dragging in its train freedom to print ? 
I thank the clergy here present, as I reverence 
their predecessors, who did not so far forget 
their country in their immediate profession as 
to deem it duty to separate themselves from 
the struggle of '76 — the Mayhews and Coopers, 
who remembered that they were citizens before 
they were clergymen. 

Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart 
I thank that brave little band at Alton for re- 
sisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had 
fled from city to city, — suffered the destruction 
of three presses patiently. At length he took 
counsel with friends, men of character, of tried 
integrity, of wide views, of Christian principle. 
They thought the crisis had come ; it was full 
time to assert the laws. They saw around them, 
not a community like our own, of fixed habits, 
of character moulded and settled, but one " in 
the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of 
manhood." The people there, children of our 
older States, seem to have forgotten the blood- 
tried principles of their fathers the moment 
they lost sight of our New England hills. 
Something was to be done to show them the 
priceless value of the freedom of the press, to 



THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY, 45 

bring back and set right their wandering and 
confused ideas. He and his advisers looked 
out on a community, staggering like a drunken 
man, indifferent to their rights and confused in 
their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they 
might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that 
of which we cannot judge, the necessity of re- 
sistance. Insulted law called for it. Public 
opinion, fast hastening on the downward course., 
must be arrested. 

Does not the event show they judged rightly? 
Absorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the na- 
tion all at once come to a stand ? Men begin, 
as in 1776 and 1640, to discuss principles, to 
weigh characters, to find out where they are. 
Haply we may awake before we are borne over 
the precipice. 

I am glad, sir, to see this crowded house, It 
is good for us to be here. When Liberty is in 
danger Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, 
to strike the key-note for these United States. 
I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such as 
those to which I have alluded have been ut- 
tered here. The passage of these resolutions, 
in spite of this opposition, led by the Attorney- 
General of the Commonwealth, will show more 
clearly, more decisively, the deep indignation 
with which Boston regards this outrage. 



JOHN C. CALHOUN, 

OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 

(born 1782, DIED 1850.) 



ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION, SENATE, MARCH 4, 
1850. 

I HAVE, Senators, believed from the first that 
the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if 
not prevented by some timely and effective 
measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this 
opinion, I have, on all proper occasions, en- 
deavored to call the attention of both the two 
great parties which divide the country to adopt 
some measure to prevent so great a disaster, 
but without success. The agitation has been 
permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt 
to resist it, until it has reached a point when it 
can no longer be disguised or denied that the 
Union is in danger. You have thus had forced 
upon you the greatest and the gravest question 
that can ever come under your consideration : 
How can the Union be preserved ? 
46 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 47 

To give a satisfactory answer to this mighty 
question, it is indispensable to have an accurate 
and thorough knowledge of the nature and 
the character of the cause by which the Union 
is endangered. Without such knowledge it 
is impossible to pronounce, with any certainty, 
by what measure it can be saved ; just as it 
would be impossible for a physician to pro- 
nounce, in the case of some dangerous disease, 
with any certainty, by what remedy the patient 
could be saved, without similar knowledge of 
the nature and character of the cause which 
produced it. The first question, then, presented 
for consideration, in the investigation I pro- 
pose to make, in order to obtain such knowl- 
edge, is : What is it that has endangered the 
Union ? 

To this question there can be but one an- 
swer : That the immediate cause is the almost 
universal discontent which pervades all the 
States composing the southern section of the 
Union. This widely-extended discontent is not 
of recent origin. It commenced with the agita- 
tion of the slavery question, and has been in- 
creasing ever since. The next question, going 
one step further back, is : What has caused this 
widely-diffused and almost universal discon- 
tent? 



48 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

It is a great mistake to suppose, as is by 
some, that it originated with demagogues, who 
excited the discontent with the intention of 
aiding their personal advancement, or with the 
disappointed ambition of certain politicians, 
who resorted to it as a means of retrieving their 
fortunes. On the contrary, all the great politi- 
cal influences of the section were arrayed against 
excitement, and exerted to the utmost to keep 
the people quiet. The great mass of the 
people of the South were divided, as in the 
other section, into Whigs and Democrats. The 
leaders and the presses of both parties in the 
South were very solicitous to prevent excite- 
ment and to preserve quiet ; because it was 
seen that the effects of the former would neces- 
sarily tend to weaken, if not destroy, the politi- 
cal ties which united them with their respec- 
tive parties in the other section. Those who 
know the strength of the party ties will readily 
appreciate the immense force which this cause 
exerted against agitation, and in favor of pre- 
serving quiet. But, great as it was, it was not 
sufficient to prevent the wide-spread discontent 
which now pervades the section. No ; some 
cause, far deeper and more powerful than the 
one supposed, must exist, to account for dis- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 49 

content so wide and deep. The question then 
recurs : What is the cause of this discontent ? It 
will be found in the belief of the people of the 
Southern States, as prevalent as the discontent 
itself, that they cannot remain, as things now 
are, consistently with honor and safety, in the 
Union. The next question to be considered is : 
What has caused this belief ? 

One of the causes is, undoubtedly, to be 
traced to the long-continued agitation of the 
slavery question on the part of the North, and 
the many aggressions which they have made on 
the rights of the South during the time. I will 
not enumerate them at present, as it will be 
done hereafter in its proper place. 

There is another lying back of it — with which 
this is intimately connected — that may be re- 
garded as the great and primary cause. This is 
to be found in the fact, that the equilibrium be- 
tween the two sections, in the Government as it 
stood when the Constitution was ratified and the 
Government put in action, has been destroyed. 
At that time there was nearly a perfect equilib- 
rium between the two, which afforded ample 
means to each to protect itself against the ag- 
gression of the other ; but, as it now stands, one 
section has the exclusive power of controlling 



50 JOHA' C. CALHOUN. 

the Government, which leaves the other without 
any adequate means of protecting itself against 
its encroachment and oppression. To place 
this subject distinctly before you, I have, Sena- 
tors, prepared a brief statistical statement, 
showing the relative weight of the two sections 
in the Government under the first census of 
1790, and the last census of 1840. 

According to the former, the population of 
the United States, including Vermont, Ken- 
tucky, and Tennessee, which then were in their 
incipient condition of becoming States, but 
were not actually admitted, amounted to 
3,929,827. Of this number the Northern States 
had 1,997,899, and the Southern 1,952,072, 
making a difference of only 45,827 in favor of 
the former States. 

The number of States, including Vermont, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee, were sixteen ; of 
which eight, including Vermont, belonged to 
the northern section, and eight, including Ken- 
tucky and Tennessee, to the southern, — making 
an equal division of the States between the two 
sections, under the first census. There was a 
small preponderance in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and in the Electoral College, in favor 
of the northern, owing to the fact that, accord- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 51 

ing to the provisions of the Constitution, in esti- 
mating federal numbers five slaves count but 
three ; but it was too small to affect sensibly 
the perfect equilibrium which, with that excep- 
tion, existed at the time. Such was the equality 
of the two sections when the States composing 
them agreed to enter into a Federal Union. 
Since then the equilibrium between them has 
been greatly disturbed. 

According to the last census the aggregate 
population of the United States amounted to 
17,063,357, of which the northern section 
contained 9,728,920, and the southern 7,334,437, 
making a difference in round numbers, of 
2,400,000. The number of States had increased 
from sixteen to twenty-six, making an addition 
of ten States. In the meantime the position of 
Delaware had become doubtful as to which sec- 
tion she properly belonged. Considering her as 
neutral, the Northern States will have thirteen 
and the Southern States twelve, making a dif- 
ference in the Senate of two senators in favor 
of the former. According to the apportion- 
ment under the census of 1840, there were two 
hundred and twenty-three members of the 
House of Representatives, of which the North- 
ern States had one hundred and thirty-five, and 



52 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

the Southern States (considering Delaware 
as neutral) eighty-seven, making a difference in 
favor of the former in the House of Represen- 
tatives of forty-eight. The difference in the 
Senate of two members, added to this, gives 
to the North in the Electoral College, a majority 
of fifty. Since the census of 1840, four States 
have been added to the Union — Iowa, Wis- 
consin, Florida, and Texas. They leave the 
difference in the Senate as it was when the 
census was taken ; but add two to the side of the 
North in the House, making the present major- 
ity in the House in its favor fifty, and in the 
Electoral College fifty-two. 

The result of the whole is to give the north- 
ern section a predominance in every department 
of the Government, and thereby concentrate in 
it the two elements which constitute the Fed- 
eral Government, — majority of States, and a 
majority of their population, estimated in federal 
numbers. Whatever section concentrates the 
two in itself possesses the control of the entire 
Government. 

But we are just at the close of the sixth 
decade, and the commencement of the seventh. 
The census is to be taken this year, which must 
add greatly to the decided preponderance of 



THE SLAVERY QUESTIOM. 53 

the North in the House of Representatives and 
in the Electoral College. The prospect is, also, 
that a great increase will be added to its present 
preponderance in the Senate, during the period 
of the decade, by the addition of new States. 
Two territories, Oregon and Minnesota, are 
already in progress, and strenuous efforts are 
making to bring in three additional States from 
the territory recently conquered from Mexico ; 
which, if successful, will add three other States 
in a short time to the northern section, making 
five States; and increasing the present number 
of its States from fifteen to twenty, and of its 
senators from thirty to forty. On the contrary, 
there is not a single territory in progress in the 
southern section, and no certainty that any 
additional State will be added to it during the 
decade. The prospect then is, that the two 
sections in the senate, should the effort now 
made to exclude the South from the newly 
acquired territories succeed, will stand before 
the end of the decade, twenty Northern States 
to fourteen Southern (considering Delaware as 
neutral), and forty Northern senators to twenty- 
eight Southern. This great increase of senators, 
added to the great increase of members of the 
House of Representatives and the Electoral 



54 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

College on the part of the North, which must 
take place under the next decade, will effectually 
and irretrievably destroy the equilibrium which 
existed when the Government commenced. 

Had this destruction been the operation of 
time, without the interference of Government, 
the South would have had no reason to com- 
plain ; but such was not the fact. It was 
caused by the legislation of this Government, 
which was appointed as the common agent of 
all, and charged with the protection of the in- 
terests and security of all. The legislation by 
which it has been effected may be classed under 
three heads. The first is, that series of acts by 
which the South has been excluded from the 
common territory belonging to all the States as 
members of the Federal Union — which have 
had the effect of extending vastly the portion 
allotted to the northern section, and restricting 
within narrow limits the portion left the South. 
The next consists in adopting a system of revenue 
and disbursements, by which an undue propor- 
tion of the burden of taxation has been imposed 
upon the South, and an undue proportion of its 
proceeds appropriated to the North ; and the 
last is a system of political measures, by which 
the original character of the Government has 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 55 

been radically changed. I propose to bestow 
upon each of these, in the order they stand, a 
few remarks, with the view of showing that it 
is owing to the action of this Government that 
the equilibrium between the two sections has 
been destroyed, and the whole powers of the 
system centered in a sectional majority. 

The first of the series of Acts by which the 
South was deprived of its due share of the 
territories, originated with the confederacy 
which preceded the existence of this Govern- 
ment. It is to be found in the provision of the 
ordinance of 1787. Its effect was to exclude 
the South entirely from that vast and fertile 
region which lies between the Ohio and the 
Mississippi rivers, now embracing five States 
and one Territory. The next of the series is 
the Missouri compromise, which excluded the 
South from that large portion of Louisiana 
which lies north of 36° 30', excepting what is 
included in the State of Missouri. The last of 
the series excluded the South from the whole 
of Oregon Territory. All these, in the slang of 
the day, were what are called slave territories, 
and not free soil ; that is, territories belonging 
to slaveholding powers and open to the emi- 
gration of masters with their slaves. By these 



56 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

several Acts the South was excluded from one 
million two hundred and thirty-eight thousand 
and twenty-five square miles — an extent of 
country considerably exceeding the entire val- 
ley of the Mississippi. To the South was left 
the portion of the Territory of Louisiana lying 
south of 36° 30', and the portion north of it in- 
cluded in the State of Missouri, with the por- 
tion lying south of 36° 30' including the States 
of Louisiana and Arkansas, and the territory 
lying west of the latter, and south of 36° 30', 
called the Indian country. These, with the 
Territory of Florida, now the State, make, in 
the whole, two hundred and eighty-three thou- 
sand five hundred and three square miles. To 
this must be added the territory acquired with 
Texas. If the whole should be added to the 
southern section it would make an increase of 
three hundred and twenty-five thousand five 
hundred and twenty, which would make the 
whole left to the South six hundred and nine 
thousand and twenty-three. But a large part 
of Texas is still in contest between the two sec- 
tions, which leaves it uncertain what will be the 
real extent of the proportion of territory that 
may be left to the South. 

I have not included the territory recently ac- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 57 

quired by the treaty with Mexico. The North is 
making the most strenuous efforts to appropri- 
ate the whole to herself, by excluding the 
South from every foot of it. If she should 
succeed, it will add to that from which the 
South has already been excluded, 526,078 
square miles, and would increase the whole 
which the North has appropriated to herself, to 
I, 764,023, not including the portion that she 
may succeed in excluding us frorn in Texas. 
To sum up the whole, the United States, since 
they declared their independence, have acquired 
2,373,046 square miles of territory, from which 
the North will have excluded the South, if she 
should succeed in monopolizing the newly ac- 
quired territories, about three fourths of the 
whole, leaving to the South but about one 
fourth. 

Such is the first and great cause that has 
destroyed the equilibrium between the two sec- 
tions in the Government. 

The next is the system of revenue and dis- 
bursements which has been adopted by the 
Government. It is well known that the Govern- 
ment has derived its revenue mainly from du- 
ties on imports. I shall not undertake to show 
that such duties must necessarily fall mainly on 



58 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

the exporting States, and that the South, as 
the great exporting portion of the Union, has 
in reality paid vastly more than her due pro- 
portion of the revenue ; because I deem it un- 
necessary, as the subject has on so many occa- 
sions been fully discussed. Nor shall I, for the 
same reason, undertake to show that a far 
greater portion of the revenue has been dis- 
bursed at the North, than its due share ; and 
that the joint effect of these causes has 
been, to transfer a vast amount from South to 
North, which, under an equal system of revenue 
and disbursements, would not have been lost to 
her. If to this be added, that many of the 
duties were imposed, not for revenue, but for 
protection, — that is, intended to put money, 
not in the treasury, but directly into the 
pockets of the manufacturers, — some concep- 
tion may be formed of the immense amount 
which, in the long course of sixty years, has 
been transferred from South to North. There 
are no data by which it can be estimated with 
any certainty ; but it is safe to say that it 
amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. Un- 
der the most moderate estimate, it would be 
sufificient to add greatly to the wealth of the 
North, and thus greatly increase her popula- 



THE Sm^AVERY question. 59 

tion by attracting emigration from all quarters 
to that section. 

This, combined with the great primary cause, 
amply explains why the North has acquired 
a preponderance in every department of the 
Government by its disproportionate increase of 
population and States. The former, as has 
been shown, has increased, in fifty years, 2,400,- 
000 over that of the South. This increase of 
population, during so long a period, is satisfac- 
torily accounted for, by the number of emi- 
grants, and the increase of their descendants, 
which have been attracted to the northern sec- 
tion from Europe and the South, in consequence 
of the advantages derived from the causes as- 
signed. If they had not existed — if the South 
had retained all the capital which had been ex- 
tracted from her by the fiscal action of the 
Government ; and, if it had not been excluded 
by the ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri com- 
promise, from the region lying between the 
Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, and between 
the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains north 
of 36° 30' — it scarcely admits of a doubt, that it 
would have divided the emigration with the 
North, and by retaining her own people, would 
have at least equalled the North in population 



6o JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

under the census of 1840, and probably under 
that about to be taken. She would also, if she 
had retained her equal rights in those territories, 
have maintained an equality in the number of 
States with the North, and have preserved the 
equilibrium between the two sections that 
existed at the commencement of the Govern- 
ment. The loss, then, of the equilibrium is 
to be attributed to the action of this Govern- 
ment. 

But while these measures were destroying the 
equilibrium between the two sections, the action 
of the Government was leading to a radical 
change in its character, by concentrating all the 
power of the system in itself. The occasion 
will not permit me to trace the measures by 
which this great change has been consummated. 
If it did, it would not be difficult to show that 
the process commenced at an early period of 
the Government ; and that it proceeded, almost 
without interruption, step by step, until it vir- 
tually absorbed its entire powers ; but without 
going through the whole process to establish 
the fact, it may be done satisfactorily by a very 
short statement. 

That the Government claims, and practically 
maintains, the right to decide in the last resort, 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 6 1 

as to the extent of its powers, will scarcely be 
denied by any one conversant with the political 
history of the country. That it also claims the 
right to resort to force to maintain whatever 
power it claims against all opposition is equally 
certain. Indeed it is apparent, from what we 
daily hear, that this has become the prevailing 
and fixed opinion of a great majority of the 
community. Now, I ask, what limitation can 
possibly be placed upon the powers of a gov- 
ernment claiming and exercising such rights ? 
And, if none can be, how can the separate gov- 
ernments of the States maintain and protect the 
powers reserved to them by the Constitution — 
or the people of the several States maintain 
those which are reserved to them, and among 
others, the sovereign powers by which they or- 
dained and established, not only their separate 
State Constitutions and Governments, but also 
the Constitution and Government of the United 
States? But, if they have no constitutional 
means of maintaining them against the right 
claimed by this Government, it necessarily fol- 
lows, that they hold them at its pleasure and 
discretion, and that all the powers of the sys- 
tem are in reality concentrated in it. It also 
follows, that the character of the Government 



62 JOHN C. CALHOUN, 

has been changed in consequence, from a fed- 
eral republic, as it originally came from the 
hands of its framers, into a great national con- 
solidated democracy. It has indeed, at present, 
all the characteristics of the latter, and not of 
the former, although it still retains its outward 
form. 

The result of the whole of those causes com- 
bined is, that the North has acquired a decided 
ascendency over every department of this Gov- 
ernment, and through it a control over all the 
powers of the system. A single section gov- 
erned by the will of the numerical majority, 
has now, in fact, the control of the Government 
and the entire powers of the system. What 
was once a constitutional federal republic, is 
now converted, in reality, into one as absolute 
as that of the Autocrat of Russia, and as des- 
potic in its tendency as any absolute govern- 
ment that ever existed. 

As, then, the North has the absolute control 
over the Government, it is manifest that on all 
questions between it and the South, where 
there is a diversity of interests, the interest of 
the latter will be sacrificed to the former, how- 
ever oppressive the effects may be ; as the 
South possesses no means by which it can re- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 63 

sist, through the action of the Government. 
But if there was no question of vital importance 
to the South, in reference to which there was a 
diversity of views between the two sections, 
this state of things might be endured without 
the hazard of destruction to the South. But 
such is not the fact. There is a question of 
vital importance to the southern section, in 
reference to which the views and feelings of the 
two sections are as opposite and hostile as they 
can possibly be. 

I refer to the relation between the two races in 
the southern section, which constitutes a vital 
portion of her social organization. Every por- 
tion of the North entertains views and feelings 
more or less hostile to it. Those most opposed 
and hostile, regard it as a sin, and consider them- 
selves under the most sacred obligation to use 
every effort to destroy it. Indeed, to the ex- 
tent that they conceive that they have power, 
they regard themselves as implicated in the sin, 
and responsible for not suppressing it by the use 
of all and every means. Those less opposed and 
hostile, regarded it as a crime — an offence 
against humanity, as they call it ; and, although 
not so fanatical, feel themselves bound to use 
all efforts to effect the same object ; while those 



64 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

who are least opposed and hostile, regard it as a 
blot and a stain on the character of what they 
call the Nation, and feel themselves accordingly- 
bound to give it no countenance or support. 
On the contrary, the southern section regards 
the relation as one which cannot be destroyed 
without subjecting the two races to the great- 
est calamity, and the section to poverty, deso- 
lation, and wretchedness ; and accordingly they 
feel bound, by every consideration of interest 
and safety, to defend it. 

This hostile feeling on the part of the North 
toward the social organization of the South long 
lay dormant, and it only required some cause to 
act on those who felt most intensely that they 
were responsible for its continuance, to call it into 
action. The increasing power of this Govern- 
ment, and of the control of the northern section 
over all its departments, furnished the cause. 
It was this which made the impression on the 
minds of many, that there was little or no re- 
straint to prevent the Government from doing 
whatever it might choose to do. This was 
suf^cient of itself to put the most fanatical por- 
tion of the North in action, for the purpose of 
destroying the existing relation between the 
two races in the South. 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 65 

The first organized movement toward it com- 
menced in 1835. Then, for the first time, 
societies were organized, presses estabHshed, 
lecturers sent forth to excite the people of the 
North, and incendiary publications scattered 
over the whole South, through the mail. The 
South was thoroughly aroused. Meetings were 
held ever>'where, and resolutions adopted, call- 
ing upon the North to apply a remedy to arrest 
the threatened evil, and pledging themselves to 
adopt measures for their own protection, if it 
was not arrested. At the meeting of Congress, 
petitions poured in from the North, calling upon 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of 
Columbia, and to prohibit, what they called, 
the internal slave trade between the States — 
announcing at the same time, that their ulti- 
mate object was to abolish slavery, not only 
in the District, but in the States and through- 
out the Union. At this period, the number 
engaged in the agitation was small, and pos- 
sessed little or no personal influence. 

Neither party in Congress had, at that time, 
any sympathy with them or their cause. The 
members of each party presented their pe- 
titions with great reluctance. Nevertheless, 
small, and contemptible as the party then was, 



(:6 JOHN C. CALHX)UN. 

both of the great parties of the North dreaded 
them. They felt, that though small, they were 
organized in reference to a subject which had 
a great and commanding influence over the 
northern mind. Each party, on that account, 
feared to oppose their petitions, lest the oppo- 
site party should take advantage of the one 
who might do so, by favoring them. The effect 
was, that both united in insisting that the peti- 
tions should be received, and that Congress 
should take jurisdiction over the subject. To 
justify their course, they took the extraordi- 
nary ground, that Congress was bound to re- 
ceive petitions on every subject, however ob- 
jectionable they might be, and whether they 
had, or had not, jurisdiction over the subject. 
Those views prevailed in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and partially in the Senate ; and 
thus the party succeeded in their first move- 
ments, in gaining what they proposed — a posi- 
tion in Congress, from which agitation could be 
extended over the whole Union. This was the 
commencement of the agitation, which has 
ever since continued, and which, as is now ac- 
knowledged, has endangered the Union itself. 
As for myself, I believed at that early period, 
if the party who got up the petitions should 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 6/ 

• 

succeed in getting Congress to take jurisdiction, 
that agitation would follow, and that it would 
in the end, if not arrested, destroy the Union. 
I then so expressed myself in debate, and called 
upon both parties to take grounds against 
assuming jurisdiction ; but in vain. Had my 
voice been heeded, and had Congress refused 
to take jurisdiction, by the united votes of all 
parties, the agitation which followed would 
have been prevented, and the fanatical zeal that 
gave impulse to the agitation, and which has 
brought us to our present perilous condition, 
would have become extinguished, from the want 
of fuel to feed the flame. That was the time for 
the North to have shown her devotion to the 
Union ; but, unfortunately, both of the great 
parties of that section were so intent on obtain- 
ing or retaining party ascendency, that all other 
considerations were overlooked or forgotten. 

What has since followed are but natural con- 
sequences. With the success of their first move- 
ment, this small fanatical party began to acquire 
strength ; and with that, to become an object 
of courtship to both the great parties. The 
necessary consequence was, a further increase 
of power, and a gradual tainting of the opinions 
of both the other parties with their doctrines, 



68 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

until the infection has extended over both ; and 
the great mass of the population of the North, 
who, whatever may be their opinion of the 
original abolition party, which still preserves its 
distinctive organization, hardly ever fail, when 
it comes to acting, to co-operate in carrying out 
their measures. With the increase of their in- 
fluence, they extended the sphere of their ac- 
tion. In a short time after the commencement 
of their first movement, they had acquired suf- 
ficient influence to induce the legislatures of 
most of the Northern States to pass acts, which 
in effect abrogated the clause of the Constitu- 
tion that provides for the delivery up of fugi- 
tive slaves. Not long after, petitions followed 
to abolish slavery in forts, magazines, and dock- 
yards, and all other places where Congress had 
exclusive power of legislation. This was fol- 
lowed by petitions and resolutions of legis- 
latures of the Northern States, and popular 
meetings, to exclude the Southern States from 
all territories acquired, or to be acquired, and 
to prevent the admission of any State hereafter 
into the Union, which, by its constitution, does 
not prohibit slavery. And Congress is invoked 
to do all this, expressly with the view of the 
final abolition of slavery in the States. That 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 69 

has been avowed to be the ultimate object 
from the beginning of the agitation until the 
present time ; and yet the great body of both 
parties of the North, with the full knowledge of 
the fact, although disavowing the abolitionists, 
have co-operated with them in almost all their 
measures. 

Such is a brief history of the agitation, as far 
as it has yet advanced. Now I ask, Senators, 
what is there to prevent its further progress, 
until it fulfils the ultimate end proposed, unless 
some decisive measure should be adopted to 
prevent it ? Has any one of the causes, which 
has added to its increase from its original small 
and contemptible beginning until it has attained 
its present magnitude, diminished in force? Is 
the original cause of the movement — that slav- 
ery is a sin, and ought to be suppressed — 
weaker now than at the commencement ? Or is 
the abolition party less numerous or influential, 
or have they less influence with, or less control 
over the two great parties of the North in elec- 
tions? Or has the South greater means of in- 
fluencing or controlling the movements of this 
Government now, than it had when the agitation 
commenced ? To all these questions but one 
answer can be given : No, no, no. The very 



70 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

reverse is true. Instead of being weaker, all 
the elements in favor of agitation are stronger 
now than they were in 1835, when it first com- 
menced, while all the elements of influence' on 
the part of the South are weaker. Unless some- 
thing decisive is done, I again ask, what is to 
stop this agitation, before the great and final 
object at which it aims — the abolition of slavery 
in the States — is consummated? Is it, then, 
not certain, that if something is not done to 
arrest it, the South will be forced to choose 
between abolition and secession ? Indeed, as 
events are now moving, it will not require the 
South to secede, in order to dissolve the Union. 
Agitation will of itself effect it, of which its past 
history furnishes abundant proof — as I shall 
next proceed to show. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that disunion 
can be effected by a single blow. The cords 
which bound these States together in one com- 
mon Union, are far too numerous and powerful 
for that. Disunion must be the work of time. 
It is only through a long process, and succes- 
sively, that the cords can be snapped, until the 
whole fabric falls asunder. Already the agitation 
of the slavery question has snapped some of 
the most important, and has greatly weakened 
all the others, as I shall proceed to show. 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 7 1 

The cords that bind the States together are 
not only many, but various in character. Some 
are spiritual or ecclesiastical ; some political ; 
others social. Some appertain to the benefit 
conferred by the Union, and others to the feel- 
ing of duty and obligation. 

The strongest of those of a spiritual and 
ecclesiastical nature, corftisted in the unity of 
the great religious denominations, all of which 
originally embraced the whole Union. All 
these denominations, with the exception, per- 
haps, of the Catholics, were organized very 
much upon the principle of our political insti- 
tutions. Beginning with smaller meetings, cor- 
responding with the political divisions of the 
country, their organization terminated in one 
great central assemblage, corresponding very 
much with the character of Congress. At these 
meetings the principal clergymen and lay mem- 
bers of the respective denominations from all 
parts of the Union, met to transact business 
relating to their common concerns. It was not 
confined to what appertained to the doctrines 
and discipline of the respective denominations, 
but extended to plans for disseminating the 
Bible — establishing missions, distributing tracts 
• — and of establishing presses for the publication 



72 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

of tracts, newspapers, and -periodicals, with a 
view of diffusing religious information — and for 
the support of their respective doctrines and 
creeds. All this combined contributed greatly 
to strengthen the bonds of the Union. The 
ties which held each denomination together 
formed a strong cord to hold the whole Union 
together , but, powerftjl as they were, they have 
not been able to resist the explosive effect of 
slavery agitation. 

The first of these cords which snapped, under 
its explosive force, was that of the powerful 
Methodist Episcopal Church. The numerous 
and strong ties which held it together, are all 
broken, and its unity is gone. They now form 
separate churches ; and, instead of that feeling 
of attachment and devotion to the interests of 
the whole church which was formerly felt, 
they are now arrayed into two hostile bodies, 
engaged in litigation about what was formerly 
their common property. 

The next cord that snapped was that of the 
Baptists — one of the largest and most respect- 
able of the denominations. That of the Pres- 
byterian is not entirely snapped, but some of 
its strands have given way. That of the Epis- 
copal Church is the only one of the four great 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 73 

Protestant denominations which remains un- 
broken and entire. 

The strongest cord, of a poHtical character, 
consists of the many and powerful ties that 
have held together the two great parties which 
have, with some modifications, existed from the 
beginning of the Government. They both ex- 
tended to every portion of the Union, and 
strongly contributed to hold all its parts to- 
gether. But this powerful cord has fared no 
better than the spiritual. It resisted, for a long 
time, the explosive tendency of the agitation, 
but has finally snapped under its force — if not 
entirely, in a great measure. Nor is there one 
of the remaining cords which has not been 
greatly weakened. To this extent the Union 
has already been destroyed by agitation, in the 
only way it can be, by sundering and weaken- 
ing the cords which bind it together. 

If the agitation goes on, the same force, act- 
ing with increased intensity, as has been shown, 
will finally snap every cord, when nothing will 
be left to hold the States together except force. 
But, surely, that can, with no propriety of Jan- 
guage, be called a Union, when the only means 
by which the weaker is held connected with 
the stronger portion is force. It may, indeed. 



74 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

keep them connected ; but the connection will 
partake much more of the character of subju- 
gation, on the part of the weaker to the stronger, 
than the union of free, independent States, in 
one confederation, as they stood in the early- 
stages of the Government, and which only is 
worthy of the sacred name of Union. 

Having now, Senators, explained what it is 
that endangers the Union, and traced it to its 
cause, and explained its nature and character, 
the question again recurs. How can the Union 
be saved ? To this I answer, there is but one 
way by which it can be, and that is by adopting 
such measures as will satisfy the States be- 
longing to the southern section, that they can 
remain in the Union consistently with their 
honor and their safety. There is, again, only 
one way by which this can be effected, and that 
is by removing the causes by which this belief 
has been produced. Do tJiis, and discontent 
will cease, harmony and kind feelings between 
the sections be restored, and every apprehen- 
sion of danger to the Union be removed. The 
question, then, is, How can this be done ? But, 
before I undertake to answer this question, I 
propose to show by what the Union cannot be 
saved. 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 75 

It cannot, then, be saved by eulogies on the 
Union, however splendid or numerous. The 
cry of " Union, Union, the glorious Union ! " 
can no more prevent disunion than the cry of 
" Health, health, glorious health ! " on the part 
of the physician, can save a patient lying dan- 
gerously ill. So long as the Union, instead of 
being regarded as a protector, is regarded in the 
opposite character, by not much less than a 
majority of the States, it will be in vain to at- 
tempt to conciliate them by pronouncing eulo- 
gies on it. 

Besides, this cry of Union comes commonly 
from those whom we cannot believe to be 
sincere. It usually comes from our assailants. 
But we cannot believe them to be sincere ; for, 
if they loved the Union, they would necessa- 
rily be devoted to the Constitution. It made 
the Union, — and to destroy the Constitution 
would be to destroy the Union. But the only 
reliable and certain evidence of devotion to the 
Constitution is to abstain, on the one hand, 
from violating it, and to repel, on the other, all 
attempts to violate it. It is only by faithfully 
performing these high duties that the Constitu- 
tion can be preserved, and with it the Union. 

But how stands the profession of devotion to 



']6 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

the Union by our assailants, when brought to 
this test ? Have they abstained from violating 
the Constitution ? Let the many acts passed 
by the Northern States to set aside and annul 
the clause of the Constitution providing for the 
delivery up of fugitive slaves answer. I cite 
this, not that it is the only instance (for there 
are many others), but because the violation in 
this particular is too notorious and palpable to 
be denied. Again : Have they stood forth 
faithfully to repel violations of the Constitu- 
tion ? Let their course in reference to the 
agitation of the slavery question, which was 
commenced and has been carried on for fifteen 
years, avowedly for the purpose of abolishing 
slavery in the States — an object all acknowl- 
edged to be unconstitutional, — answer. Let 
them show a single instance, during this long 
period, in which they have denounced the 
agitators or their attempts to effect what is 
admitted to be unconstitutional, or a single 
measure which they have brought forward for 
that purpose. How can we, with all these facts 
before us, believe that they are sincere in their 
profession of devotion to the Union, or avoid 
believing their profession is but intended to in- 
crease the vigor of their assaults and to weaken 
the force of our resistance ? 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. "jy 

Nor can we regard the profession of devotion 
to the Union, on the part of those who are not 
our assailants, as sincere, when they pronounce 
eulogies upon the Union, evidently with the 
intent of charging us with disunion, without 
uttering one word of denunciation against our 
assailants. If friends of the Union, their course 
should be to unite with us in repelling these 
assaults, and denouncing the authors as ene- 
mies of the Union. Why they avoid this, and 
pursue the course they do, it is for them to 
explain. 

Nor can the Union be saved by invoking the 
name of the illustrious Southerner whose mor- 
tal remains repose on the western bank of 
the Potomac. He was one of us, — a slave- 
holder and a planter. We have studied his 
history, and find nothing in it to justify sub- 
mission to wrong. On the contrary, his great 
fame rests on the solid foundation, that, while 
he was careful to avoid doing wrong to others, 
he was prompt and decided in repelling wrong. 
I trust that, in this respect, we profited by his 
example. 

Nor can we find any thing in his history to 
deter us from seceding from the Union, should 
it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was insti- 



78 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

tuted, by being permanently and hopelessly 
converted into the means of oppressing instead 
of protecting us. On the contrary, we find 
much in his example to encourage us, should 
we be forced to the extremity of deciding be- 
tween submission and disunion. 

There existed then, as well as now, a union 
— between the parent country and her colo- 
nies. It was a union that had much to endear 
it to the people of the colonies. Under its pro- 
tecting and superintending care, the colonies 
were planted and grew up and prospered, 
through a long course of years, until they be- 
came populous and wealthy. Its benefits were 
not limited to them. Their extensive agricul- 
tural and other productions, gave birth to a 
flourishing commerce, which richly rewarded 
the parent country for the trouble and expense 
of establishing and protecting them. Washing- 
ton was born and grew up to manhood under 
that Union. He acquired his early distinction in 
its service, and there is every reason to believe 
that he was devotedly attached to it. But his 
devotion was a national one. He was attached 
to it, not as an end, but as a means to an end. 
When it failed to fulfil its end, and, instead of 
affording protection, was converted into the 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 79 

means of oppressing the colonies, he did not 
hesitate to draw his sword, and head the great 
movement by which that union was forever 
severed, and the independence of these States 
estabhshed. This was the great and crowning 
glory of his life, which has spread his fame over 
the whole globe, and will transmit it to the 
latest posterity. 

Nor can the plan proposed by the distin- 
guished Senator from Kentucky, nor that of 
the administration, save the Union. I shall 
pass by, without remark, the plan proposed by 
the Senator. I, however, assure the distin- 
guished and able Senator, that, in taking this 
course, no disrespect whatever is intended to 
him or to his plan. I have adopted it because 
so many Senators of distinguished abilities, who 
were present when he delivered his speech, and 
explained his plan, and who were fully capable 
to do justice to the side they support, have 
replied to him. * * * 

Having now shown what cannot save the 
Union, I return to the question with which I 
commenced. How can the Union be saved ? 
There is but one way by which it can with any 
certainty ; and that is, by a full and final settle- 
ment, on the principle of justice, of all the ques- 



8o JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

tions at issue between the two sections. The 
South asks for justice, simple justice, and less 
she ought not to take. She has no compromise 
to offer, but the Constitution ; and no conces- 
sion or surrender to make. She has already 
surrendered so much that she has little left to 
surrender. Such a settlement would go to the 
root of the evil, and remove all cause of dis- 
content, by satisfying the South that she could 
remain honorably and safely in the Union, and 
thereby restore the harmony and fraternal feel- 
ings between the sections, which existed ante- 
rior to the Missouri agitation. Nothing else can, 
with any certainty, finally and forever settle the 
question at issue, terminate agitation, and save 
the Union. 

But can this be done? Yes, easily ; not by 
the weaker party, for it can, of itself do nothing, 
— not even protect itself — but by the stronger. 
The North has only to will it to accomplish it 
— to do justice by conceding to the South an 
equal right in the acquired territory', and to do 
her duty by causing the stipulations relative to 
fugitive slaves to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease 
the agitation of the slave question, and to pro- 
vide for the insertion of a provision in the Con- 
stitution, by an amendment, which will restore 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 8 1 

to the South, in substance, the power she pos- 
sessed of protecting herself, before the equi- 
Hbrium between the sections was destroyed by 
the action of this Government. There will be 
no difficulty in devising such a provision — one 
that will protect the South, and which, at the 
same time, will improve and strengthen the 
Government, instead of impairing and weaken- 
ing it. 

But will the North agree to this? It is for 
her to answer the question. But, I will say, 
she cannot refuse, if she has half the love for 
the Union which she professes to have, or with- 
out justly exposing herself to the charge that 
her love of power and aggrandizement is far 
greater than her love of the Union. At all 
events the responsibility of saving the Union 
rests on the North, and not on the South. The 
South cannot save it by any act of hers, and 
the North may save it without any sacrifice 
whatever, unless to do justice, and to perform 
her duties under the Constitution, should be 
regarded by her as a sacrifice. 

It is time, Senators, that there should be an 
open and manly avowal on all sides, as to what 
is intended to be done. If the question is not 
now settled, it is uncertain whether it ever can 



82 JOHN C. CALHOUN. 

hereafter be ; and we, as the representatives of 
the States of this Union, regarded as govern- 
ments, should come to a distinct understanding 
as to our respective views, in order to ascertain 
whether the great questions at issue can be 
settled or not. If you, who represent the 
stronger portion, cannot agree to settle on the 
broad principle of justice and duty, say so ; and 
let the States we both represent agree to sepa- 
rate and part in peace. If you are unwilling 
we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall 
know what to do, when you reduce the ques- 
tion to submission or resistance. If you remain 
silent, you will compel us to infer by your acts 
what you intend. In that case, California will 
become the test question. If you admit her, 
under all the difficulties that oppose her admis- 
sion, you compel us to infer that you intend to 
exclude us from the whole of the acquired ter- 
ritories, with the intention of destroying, irre- 
trievably, the equilibrium between the two sec- 
tions. We would be blind not to perceive in 
that case, that your real objects are power and 
aggrandizement, and infatuated, not to act 
accordingly. 

I have now. Senators, done my duty in ex- 
pressing my opinions fully, freely and candidly, 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 83 

on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have 
been governed by the motives which have gov- 
erned me in all the stages of the agitation of 
the slavery question since its commencement. 
I have exerted myself, during the whole period, 
to arrest it, with the intention of saving the 
Union, if it could be done; and if it could not, 
to save the section where it has pleased Provi- 
dence to cast my lot, and which I sincerely be- 
lieve has justice and the Constitution on its side. 
Having faithfully done my duty to the best of 
my ability, both to the Union and my section, 
throughout this agitation, I shall have the con- 
solation, let what will come, that I am free 
from all responsibility. 



DANIEL WEBSTER, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(born, 1782, DIED, 1852.) 

ON THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION; SENATE 
OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 7, 1850. 

Mr. President: 

I wish to speak to-day, not as a Massachu- 
setts man, nor as a northern man, but as an 
American, and a member of the Senate of the 
United States. It is fortunate that there is a 
Senate of the United States ; a body not yet 
moved from its propriety, nor lost to a just 
sense of its own dignity and its own high respon- 
sibihties, and a body to which the country looks, 
with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, 
and healing counsels. It is not to be denied 
that we live in the midst of strong agitations and 
are surrounded by very considerable dangers to 
our institutions and government. The impris- 
oned winds are let loose. The East, the North, 
and the stormy South combine to throw the 
whole sea into commotion, to toss its billows to 
84 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 8$ 

the skies, and disclose its profoundest depths. I 
do not affect to regard myself, Mr. President, as 
holding, or fit to hold, the helm in this combat 
with the political elements ; but I have a duty 
to perform, and I mean to perform it with 
fidelity, not without a sense of existing dangers, 
but not without hope. I have a part to act, 
not for my own security or safety, for I am 
looking out for no fragment upon which to float 
away from the wreck, if wreck there must be, 
but for the good of the whole, and the preserva- 
tion of all ; and there is that which will keep 
me to my duty during this struggle, whether 
the sun and the stars shall appear for many 
days. I speak to-day for the preservation of 
the Union. " Hear me for my cause." I speak 
to-day out of a solicitous and anxious heart, for 
the restoration to the country of that quiet and 
that harmony which make the blessings of this 
Union so rich, and so dear to us all. These are 
the topics that I propose to myself to discuss; 
these are the motives, and the sole motives, 
that influence me in the wish to communicate 
my opinions to the Senate and the country ; and 
if I can do any thing, however little, for the 
promotion of these ends, I shall have accom- 
plished all that I expect. 



86 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

* * * We all know, sir, that slavery has ex- 
isted in the world from time immemorial. There 
was slavery in the earliest periods of history, 
among the Oriental nations. There was slavery 
among the Jews ; the theocratic government of 
that people issued no injunction against it. There 
was slavery among the Greeks. * * * At 
the introduction of Christianity, the Roman 
world was full of slaves, and I suppose there is 
to be found no injunction against that relation 
between man and man in the teachings of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ or of any of his apostles. 
* * * Now, sir, upon the general nature 
and influence of slavery there exists a wide dif- 
ference of opinion between the northern portion 
of this country and the southern. It is said on 
the one side, that, although not the subject of 
any injunction or direct prohibition in the New 
Testament, slavery is a wrong; that it is found- 
ed merely in the right of the strongest ; and 
that it is an oppression, like unjust wars, like 
all those conflicts by which a powerful nation 
subjects a weaker to its will ; and that, in its 
nature, whatever may be said of it in the modi- 
fications which have taken place, it is not accord- 
ing to the meek spirit of the Gospel. It is not 
" kindly affectioned " ; it does not " seek anoth- 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 8/ 

er's, and not its own "; it does not '* let the op- 
pressed go free." These are sentiments that are 
cherished, and of late with greatly augmented 
force, among the people of the Northern States. 
They have taken hold of the religious sentiment 
of that part of the country, as they have, more 
or less, taken hold of the religious feelings of a 
considerable portion of mankind. The South 
upon the other side, having been accustomed 
to this relation between the two races all their 
lives ; from their birth, having been taught, in 
general, to treat the subjects of this bondage 
with care and kindness, and I believe, in gene- 
ral, feeling great kindness for them, have not 
taken the view of the subject which I have 
mentioned. There are thousands of religious 
men, with consciences as tender as any of their 
brethren at the North, who do not see the un- 
lawfulness of slavery ; and there are more thou- 
sands, perhaps, that, whatsoever they may think 
of it in its origin, and as a matter depending upon 
natural rights, yet take things as they are, and, 
finding slavery to be an established relation of the 
society in which they live, can see no way in 
which, let their opinions on the abstract ques- 
tion be what they may, it is in the power 
of this generation to relieve themselves from 



88 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

this relation. And candor obliges me to say, 
that I believe they are just as conscientious 
many of them, and the religious people, all of 
them, as they are at the North who hold differ- 
ent opinions. 

There are men who, with clear perceptions, 
as they think, of their own duty, do not see 
how too eager a pursuit of one duty may in- 
volve them in the violation of others, or how 
too warm an embracement of one truth may 
lead to a disregard of other truths just as im- 
portant. As I heard it stated strongly, not 
many days ago, these persons are disposed to 
mount upon some particular duty, as upon 
a war-horse, and to drive furiously on and upon 
and over all other duties that may stand in the 
way. There are men who, in reference to dis- 
putes of that sort, are of opinion that human 
duties may be ascertained with the exactness of 
mathematics. They deal with morals as with 
mathematics ; and they think what is right may 
be distinguished from what is wrong with the 
precision of an algebraic equation. They have, 
therefore, none too much charity toward others 
who differ from them. They are apt, too, to 
think that nothing is good but what is per- 
fect, and that there are no compromises or 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 89 

modifications to be made in consideration of 
difference of opinion or in deference to other 
men's judgment. If their perspicacious vision 
enables them to detect a spot on the face of 
the sun, they think that a good reason why the 
sun should be struck down from heaven. They 
prefer the chance of running into utter darkness 
to living in heavenly light, if that heavenly 
light be not absolutely without any imperfec- 
tion. * * * 

But we must view things as they are. Slavery 
does exist in the United States. It did exist 
in the States before the adoption of this Con- 
stitution, and at that time. Let us, therefore, 
consider for a moment what was the state 
of. sentiment, North and South, in regard to 
slavery, — in regard to slavery, at the time 
this Constitution was adopted. A remarkable 
change has taken place since ; but what did the 
wise and great men of all parts of the country 
think of slavery then ? In what estimation did 
they hold it at the time when this Constitution 
was adopted ? It will be found, sir, if we will 
carry ourselves by historical research back to 
that day, and ascertain men's opinions by au- 
thentic records still existing among us, that 
there was no diversity of opinion between 



90 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the North and the South upon the subject of 
slavery. It will be found that both parts of 
the country held it equally an evil, a moral and 
political evil. It will not be found that, either 
at the North or at the South, there was much, 
though there was some, invective against 
slavery as inhuman and cruel. The great 
ground of objection to it was political ; that it 
weakened the social fabric ; that, taking the 
place of free labor, society became less strong 
and labor less productive ; and therefore we 
find from all the eminent men of the time the 
clearest expression of their opinion that slavery 
is an evil. They ascribed its existence here, 
not without truth, and not without some acerbi- 
ty of temper and force of language, to the in- 
jurious policy of the mother country, who, to 
favor the navigator, had entailed these evils 
upon the colonies. * * * You observe, sir, 
that the term slave, or slavery, is not used 
in the Constitution. The Constitution does 
not require that " fugitive slaves" shall be de- 
liverd up. It requires that persons held to 
service in one State, and escaping into another, 
shall be delivered up. Mr. Madison opposed 
the introduction of the term slave, or slavery, 
into the Constitution ; for he said, that he did 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 9 1 

not wish to see it recognized by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States of America that 
there could be property in men. * * * 

Here we may pause. There was, if not an entire 
unanimity, a general concurrence of sentiment 
running through the whole community, and 
especially entertained by the eminent men of 
all parts of the country. But soon a change 
began, at the North and the South, and a differ- 
ence of opinion showed itself ; the North grow- 
ing much more warm and strong against 
slavery, and the South growing much more 
warm and strong in its support. Sir, there is 
no generation of mankind whose opinions are 
not subject to be influenced by what appear to 
them to be their present emergent and exigent 
interests. I impute to the South no particu- 
larly selfish view in the change which has come 
over her. I impute to her certainly no dis- 
honest view. All that has happened has been 
natural. It has followed those causes which al- 
ways influence the human mind and operate 
upon it. What, then, have been the causes 
which have created so new a feeling in favor of 
slavery in the South, which have changed the 
whole nomenclature of the South on that sub- 
ject, so that, from being thought and described in 



92 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the terms I have mentioned and will not repeat, 
it has now become an institution, a cherished 
institution, in that quarter ; no evil, no scourge, 
but a great religious, social, and moral blessing, 
as I think I have heard it latterly spoken of ? 
I suppose this, sir, is owing to the rapid growth 
and sudden extension of the cotton planta- 
tions of the South. So far as any motive con- 
sistent with honor, justice, and general judg- 
ment could act, it was the cotton interest that 
gave a new desire to promote slavery, to spread 
it, and to use its labor. * * * 

Mr. President, sometimes when a man is 
found in a new relation to things around him 
and to other men, he says the world has 
changed, and that he is not changed. I believe, 
sir, that our self-respect leads us often to make 
this declaration in regard to ourselves when it 
is not exactly true. An individual is more apt 
to change, perhaps, than all the world around 
him. But under the present circumstances, 
and under the responsibility which I know I 
incur by what I am now stating here, I feel at 
liberty to recur to the various expressions 
and statements, made at various times, of 
my own opinions and resolutions respecting the 
admission of Texas, and all that has followed. 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION, 93 

* * * On other occasions, in debate here, 
I have expressed my determination to vote for 
no acquisition, or cession, or annexation. North 
or South, East or West. My opinion has been, 
that we have territory enough, and that we 
should follow the Spartan maxim : " Improve, 
adorn what you have," — seek no further. I 
think that it was in some observations that 
I made on the three million loan bill that I 
avowed this sentiment. In short, sir, it has been 
avowed quite as often in as many places, and 
before as many assemblies, as any humble 
opinions of mine ought to be avowed. 

But now that, under certain conditions, Texas 
is in the Union, with all her territory, as a 
slave State, with a solemn pledge also that, if 
she shall be divided into many States, those 
States may come in as slave States south of 36° 
30', how are we to deal with this subject ? I 
know no way of honest legislation, when the 
proper time comes for the enactment, but to 
carry into effect all that we have stipulated to 
do. * * * That is the meaning of the con- 
tract which our friends, the northern Democracy, 
have left us to fulfil ; and I, for one, mean to 
fulfil it, because I will not violate the faith of 
the Government. What I mean to say is, that 



94 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

the time for the admission of new States 
formed out of Texas, the number of such States, 
their boundaries, the requisite amount of popu- 
lation, and all other things connected with the 
admission, are in the free discretion of Congress, 
except this : to wit, that when new States 
formed out of Texas are to be admitted, they 
have a right, by legal stipulation and contract, 
to come in as slave States. 

Now, as to California and New Mexico, I 
hold slavery to be excluded from these terri- 
tories by a law even superior to that which ad- 
mits and sanctions it in Texas. I mean the 
law of nature, of physical geography, the law of 
the formation of the earth. That law settles 
forever, with a strength beyond all terms of 
human enactment, that slavery cannot exist in 
California or New Mexico. Understand me, 
sir ; I mean slavery as we regard it ; the slavery 
of the colored race as it exists in the southern 
States. I shall not discuss the point, but leave 
it to the learned gentlemen who have under- 
taken to discuss it ; but I suppose there is no 
slavery of that description in California now. 
I understand t\\dl peonism, a sort of penal servi- 
tude, exists there, or rather a sort of voluntary 
sale of a man and his offspring for debt, an ar- 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 95 

rangement of a peculiar nature known to the 
law of Mexico. But what I mean to say is, 
that it is impossible that African slavery, as we 
see it among us, should find its way, or be intro- 
duced, into California and New Mexico, as any 
other natural impossibility. California and New 
Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and 
scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of 
mountains of great height, with broken ridges 
and deep valleys. The sides of these moun- 
tains are entirely barren ; their tops capped by 
perennial snow. There may be in California, 
now made free by its constitution, and no doubt 
there are, some tracts of valuable land. But it 
is not so in New Mexico. Pray, what is the 
evidence which every gentleman must have ob- 
tained on this subject, from information sought 
by himself or communicated by others ? I have 
inquired and read all I could find, in order to 
acquire information on this important subject. 
What is there in New Mexico that could, by 
any possibility, induce anybody to go there 
with slaves ! There are some narrow strips of 
tillable land on the borders of the rivers ; but 
the rivers themselves dry up before midsummer 
is gone. All that the people can do in that 
region is to raise some little articles, some little 



96 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

wheat for their tortillas, and that by irrigation. 
And who expects to see a hundred black men 
cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice, or any- 
thing else, on lands in New Mexico, made fer- 
tile by irrigation ? 

I look upon it, therefore, as a fixed fact, to 
use the current expression of the day, that both 
California and New Mexico are destined to be 
free, so far as they are settled at all, which I 
believe, in regard to New Mexico, will be but 
partially, for a great length of time ; free by 
the arrangement of things ordained by the 
Power above us. I have therefore to say, in 
this respect also, that this country is fixed for 
freedom, to as many persons as shall ever live 
in it, by a less repealable law than that which 
attaches to the right of holding slaves in Texas ; 
and I will say further, that, if a resolution or a 
bill were now before us, to provide a territorial 
government for New Mexico, I would not vote 
to put any prohibition into it whatever. Such 
a prohibition would be idle, as it respects any 
effect it would have upon the territory ; and I 
would not take pains uselessly to reaffirm an 
ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact the will of 
God. I would put in no Wilmot proviso for 
the mere purpose of a taunt or a reproach. I 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 97 

would put into it no evidence of the votes of 
superior power, exercised for no purpose but to 
wound the pride, whether a just and a rational 
pride, or an irrational pride, of the citizens of 
the southern States. I have no such object, 
no such purpose. They would think it a taunt, 
an indignity ; they would think it to be an act 
taking away from them what they regard as a 
proper equality of privilege. Whether they 
expect to realize any benefit from it or not, 
they would think it at least a plain theoretic 
wrong ; that something more or less derogatory 
to their character and their rights had taken 
place. I propose to inflict no such wound upon 
anybody, unless something essentially import- 
ant to the country, and efBcient to the preser- 
vation of liberty and freedom, is to be effected. 
I repeat, therefore, sir, and, as I do not pro- 
pose to address the Senate often on this sub- 
ject, I repeat it because I wish it to be dis- 
tinctly understood, that, for the reasons stated, 
if a proposition were now here to establish a 
government for New Mexico, and it was moved 
to insert a provision for a prohibition of 
slavery, I would not vote for it. * * * Sir, 
we hear occasionally of the annexation of 
Canada ; and if there be any man, any of the 



98 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

northern Democracy, or any of the Free Soil 
party, who supposes it necessary to insert a 
Wilmot Proviso in a territorial government for 
New Mexico, that man would, of course, be of 
opinion that it is necessary to protect the ever- 
lasting snows of Canada from the foot of slav- 
ery by the same overspreading wing of an act 
of Congress. Sir, wherever there is a sub- 
stantive good to be done, wherever there is a 
foot of land to be prevented from becoming 
slave territory, I am ready to assert the principle 
of the exclusion of slavery, I am pledged to 
it from the year 1837 ! ^ have been pledged to 
it again and again ; and I will perform these 
pledges; but I will not do a thing unneces- 
sarily that wounds the feelings of others, or 
that does discredit to my own understand- 
ing. * * * 

Mr. President, in the excited times in which 
we live, there is found to exist a state of crimi- 
nation and recrimination between the North 
and South. There* are lists of grievances pro- 
duced by each; and those grievances, real or 
supposed, alienate the minds of one portion of 
the country from the other, exasperate the 
feelings, and subdue the sense of fraternal 
affection, patriotic love, and mutual regard. I 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 99 

shall bestow a little attention, sir, upon these 
various grievances existing on the one side and 
on the other. I begin with complaints of the 
South. I will not answer, further than I have, 
the general statements of the honorable Sena- 
tor from South Carolina, that the North has 
prospered at the expense of the South in con- 
sequence of the manner of administering this 
Government, in the collection of its revenues, 
and so forth. These are disputed topics, and I 
have no inclination to enter into them. But I 
will allude to other complaints of the South, 
and especially to one which has in my opinion, 
just foundation ; and that is, that there has 
been found at the North, among individuals 
and among legislators, a disinclination to per- 
form fully their constitutional duties in regard 
to the return of persons bound to service who 
have escaped into the free States. In that 
respect, the South, in my judgment, is right, 
and the North is wrong. Every member of 
every Northern legislature is bound by oath, 
like every other ofificer in the country, to sup- 
port the Constitution of the United States; 
and the article of the Constitution which says 
to these States that they shall deliver up fugi- 
tives from service, is as binding in honor and 



lOO DANIEL WEBSTER. 

conscience as any other article. No man fulfils 
his duty in any legislature who sets himself to 
find excuses, evasions, escapes from this con- 
stitutional obligation. I have always thought 
that the Constitution addressed itself to the 
legislatures of the States or to the States them- 
selves. It says that those persons escaping to 
other States "shall be delivered up," and I con- 
fess I have always been of the opinion that it 
was an injunction upon the States themselves. 
When it is said that a person escaping into 
another State, and coming therefore within the 
jurisdiction of that State, shall be delivered up, 
it seems to me the import of the clause is, that 
the State itself, in obedience to the Constitu- 
tion, shall cause him to be delivered up. That 
is my judgment. I have always entertained 
that opinion, and I entertain it now. But 
when the subject, some years ago, was before 
the Supreme Court of the United States, the 
majority of the judges held that the power to 
cause fugitives from service to be delivered 
up was a power to be exercised under the 
authority of this Government, I do not know, 
on the whole, that it may not have been a 
fortunate decision. My habit is to respect 
the result of judicial deliberations and the 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. lOI 

solemnity of judicial decisions. As it now 
stands, the business of seeing that these fugi- 
tives are deHvered up resides in the power of 
Congress and the national judicature, and my 
friend at the head of the Judiciary Committee 
has a bill on the subject now before the Senate, 
which, with some amendments to it, I propose 
to support, with all its provisions, to the fullest 
extent. And I desire to call the attention of 
all sober-minded men at the North, of all con- 
scientious men, of all men who are not carried 
away by some fanatical idea or some false im- 
pression, to their constitutional obligations. I 
put it to all the sober and sound minds at the 
North as a question of morals and a question of 
conscience. What right have they, in their 
legislative capacity, or any other capacity, to 
endeavor to get roimd this Constitution, or to 
embarrass the free exercise of the rights secured 
by the Constitution, to the person whose slaves 
escape from them ? None at all ; none at all. 
Neither in the forum of conscience, nor before 
the face of the Constitution, are they, in my 
opinion, justified in such an attempt. Of course 
it is a matter for their consideration. They 
probably, in the excitement of the times, have 
not stopped to consider this. They have fol- 



I02 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

lowed what seemed to be the current of thought 
and of motives, as the occasion arose, and they 
have neglected to investigate fully the real ques- 
tion, and to consider their constitutional obliga- 
tions; which, I am sure, if they did consider, 
they would fulfil with alacrity. I repeat, there- 
fore, sir, that here is a well-founded ground of 
complaint against the North, which ought to be 
removed, which is now in the power of the diff- 
erent departments of this government to re- 
move ; which calls for the enactment of proper 
laws authorizing the judicature of this Govern- 
ment, in the several States, to do all that is 
necessary for the recapture of fugitive slaves 
and for their restoration to those who claim 
them. Wherever I go, and whenever I speak 
on the subject, and when I speak here I desire 
to speak to the whole North, I say that the 
South has been injured in this respect, and has 
a right to complain ; and the North has been 
too careless of what I think the Constitution 
peremptorily and emphatically enjoins upon 
her as a duty. 

Complaint has been made against certain 
resolutions that emanate from legislatures at 
the North, and are sent here to us, not only on 
the subject of slavery in this District, but some- 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. I03 

times recommending Congress to consider the 
means of abolishing slavery in the States. I 
should be sorry to be called upon to present 
any resolutions here which could not be refer- 
able to any committee or any power in Con- 
gress; and therefore I should be unwilling to 
receive from the legislature of Massachusetts 
any instructions to present resolutions expres- 
sive of any opinion whatever on the subject of 
slavery, as it exists at the present moment in 
the States, for two reasons : because I do not 
consider that I, as her representative here, have 
any thing to do with it. It has become, in my 
opinion, quite too common ; and if the legis- 
•latures of the States do not like that opinion, 
they have a great deal more power to put it 
down than I have to uphold it ; it has become, 
in my opinion, quite too common a practice for 
the State legislatures to present resolutions 
here on all subjects and to instruct us on all 
subjects. There is no public man that requires 
instruction more than I do, or who requires 
information more than I do, or desires it more 
heartily ; but I do not like to have it in too 
imperative a shape. * * * 

Then, sir, there are the Abolition societies, 
of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard 



I04 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

to which I have very clear notions and opin- 
ions. I do not think them useful. I think 
their operations for the last twenty years have 
produced nothing good or valuable. At the 
same time, I believe thousands of their mem- 
bers to be honest and good men, perfectly well- 
meaning men. They have excited feelings ; 
they think they must do something for the 
cause of liberty ; and, in their sphere of action, 
they do not see what else they can do than to 
contribute to an abolition press, or an aboli- 
tion society, or to pay an abolition lecturer. I 
do not mean to impute gross motives even to 
the leaders of these societies, but I am not 
blind to the consequences of their proceedings. 
I cannot but see what mischief their interfer- 
ence with the South has produced. And is it 
not plain to every man ? Let any gentleman 
who entertains doubts on this point, recur to 
the debates in the Virginia House of Delegates 
in 1832, and he will see with what freedom a 
proposition made by Mr. Jefferson Randolph, 
for the gradual abolition of slavery was dis- 
cussed in that body. Every one spoke of 
slavery as he thought ; very ignominous and 
disparaging names and epithets were applied to 
it. The debates in the House of Delegates on 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. 105 

that occasion, I believe were all published. 
They were read by every colored man who 
could read, and to those who could not read, 
those debates were read by others. At that 
time Virginia was not unwilling or afraid to 
discuss this question, and to let that part of her 
population know as much of the discussion 
as they could learn. That was in 1832. As 
has been said by the honorable member from 
South Carolina, these abolition societies com- 
menced their course of action in 1835. It is 
said, I do not know how true it may be, that 
they sent incendiary publications into the slave 
States ; at any rate, they attempted to arouse, 
and did arouse, a very strong feeling ; in other 
words, they created great agitation in the 
North against Southern slavery. Well, what 
was the result ? The bonds of the slaves were 
bound more firmly than before, their rivets 
were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, 
which in Virginia had begun to be exhibited 
against slavery, and was opening out for the 
discussion of the question, drew back and shut 
itself up in its castle. I wish to know whether 
anybody in Virginia can now talk openly, as 
Mr. Randolph, Governor McDowel, and others 
talked in 1832, and sent their remarks to the 



I06 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

press ? We all know the fact, and we all know 
the cause ; and every thing that these agitating 
people have done has been, not to enlarge, but 
to restrain, not to set free, but to bind faster, 
the slave population of the South. * * * 

There are also complaints of the North 
against the South. I need not go over them 
particularly. The first and gravest is, that the 
North adopted the Constitution, recognizing 
the existence of slavery in the States, and rec- 
ognizing the right, to a certain extent, of the 
representation of slaves in Congress, under a 
state of sentiment and expectation which does 
not now exist ; and that by events, by circum- 
stances, by the eagerness of the South to ac- 
quire territory and extend her slave population, 
the North finds itself, in regard to the relative 
influence of the South and the North, of the 
free States and the slave States, where it never 
did expect to find itself when they agreed to 
the compact of the Constitution. They com- 
plain, therefore, that, instead of slavery being 
regarded as an evil, as it was then, an evil 
which all hoped would be extinguished gradu- 
ally, it is now regarded by the South as an 
institution to be cherished, and preserved, and 
extended ; an institution which the South has 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. lOJ 

already extended to the utmost of her power 
by the acquisition of new territory. 

Well, then, passing from that, everybody in 
the North reads ; and everybody reads what- 
soever the newspapers contain ; and the news- 
papers, some of them, especially those presses 
to which I have alluded, are careful to spread 
about among the people every reproachful sen- 
timent uttered by any Southern man bearing 
at all against the North ; every thing that is 
calculated to exasperate and to alienate ; and 
there are many such things, as everybody will 
admit, from the South, or from portions of it, 
which are disseminated among the reading 
people ; and they do exasperate, and alienate, 
and produce a most mischievous effect upon 
the public mind at the North. Sir, I would 
not notice things of this sort appearing in ob- 
scure quarters ; but one thing has occurred 
in this debate which struck me very forcibly. 
An honorable member from Louisiana ad- 
dressed us the other day on this subject. I 
suppose there is not a more amiable and worthy 
gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman 
who would be more slow to give offence to any 
body, and he did not mean in his remarks to 
give offence. But what did he say ? Why, 



I08 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

sir, he took pains to run a contrast between the 
slaves of the South and the laboring people of 
the North, giving the preference, in all points 
of condition, and comfort, and happiness to 
the slaves of the South. The honorable mem- 
ber, doubtless, did not suppose that he gave 
any offence, or did any injustice. He was 
merely expressing his opinion. But does he 
know how remarks of that sort will be received 
by the laboring people of the North ? Why, 
who are the laboring people of the North ? 
They are the whole North. They are the 
people who till their own farms with their own 
hands ; freeholders, educated men, indepen- 
dent men. Let me say, sir, that five sixths of 
the whole property of the North is in the 
hands of the laborers of the North ; they culti- 
vate their farms, they educate their children, 
they provide the means of independence. If 
they are not freeholders, they earn wages ; 
these wages accumulate, are turned into capi- 
tal, into new freeholds, and small capitalists 
are created. Such is the case, and such the 
course of things, among the industrious and 
frugal. And what can these people think 
when so respectable and worthy a gentleman 
as the member from Louisiana undertakes to 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. IO9 

prove that the absolute ignorance and the ab- 
ject slavery of the South are more in conformity 
with the high purposes and destiny of immor- 
tal, rational, human beings, than the educated, 
the independent free labor of the North ? 

There is a more tangible and irritating cause 
of grievance at the North. Free blacks are 
constan»tly employed in the vessels of the 
North, generally as cooks or stewards. When 
the vessel arrives at a southern port, these free 
colored men are taken on shore, by the police 
or municipal authority, imprisoned, and kept 
in prison till the vessel is again ready to sail. 
This is not only irritating, but exceedingly un- 
justifiable and oppressive. Mr. Hoar's mission, 
some time ago to South Carolina, was a well- 
intended effort to remove this cause of com- 
plaint. The North thinks such imprisonments 
illegal and unconstitutional ; and as the cases 
occur constantly and frequently they regard it 
as a grievance. 

Now, sir, so far as any of these grievances 
have their foundation in matters of law, they 
can be redressed, and ought to be redressed ; 
and so far as they have their foundation in 
matters of opinion, in sentiment, in mutual 
crimination and recrimination, all that we can 



no DANIEL WEBSTER. 

do is to endeavor to allay the agitation, and 
cultivate a better feeling and more fraternal 
sentiments between the South and the North. 

Mr. President, I should much prefer to have 
heard from every member on this floor declara- 
tions of opinion that this Union could never be 
dissolved, than the declaration of opinion by 
anybody, that in any case, under the pressure 
of any circumstances, such a dissolution was 
possible. I hear with distress and anguish the 
word " secession," especially when it falls from 
the lips of those who are patriotic, and known 
to the country, and known all over the world 
for their political services. Secession ! Peace- 
able secession ! Sir, your eyes and mine are 
never destined to see that miracle. The dis- 
memberment of this vast country without con- 
vulsion ! The breaking up of the fountains of 
the great deep without ruffling the surface ! 
Who is so foolish— I beg everybody's pardon — 
as to expect to see any such thing ? Sir, he 
who sees these States, now revolving in har- 
mony around a common centre, and expects to 
see them quit their places and fly off without 
convulsion, may look the next hour to see the 
heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and 
jostle against each other in the realms of space, 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. I I I 

without causing the wreck of the universe. 
There can be no such thing as a peaceable 
secession. Peaceable secession is an utter im- 
possibility. Is the great Constitution under 
which we live, covering this whole country, is 
it to be thawed and melted away by secession, 
as the snows on the mountain melt under the 
influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost un- 
^observed, and run off ? No, sir ! No, sir ! I 
will not state what might produce the disrup- 
tion of the Union ; but, sir, I see as plainly as 
I can see the sun in heaven what that disrup- 
tion itself must produce ; I see that it must 
produce war, and such a war as I will not 
describe, in its twofold character. 

Peaceable secession ! Peaceable secession ! 
The concurrent agreement of all the members 
of this great Republic to separate ! A volun- 
tary separation, with alimony on one side 
and on the other. Why, what would be the 
result ? Where is the line to be drawn ? What 
States are to secede ? What is to remain 
American ? What am I to be ? An American 
no longer ? Am I to become a sectional man, 
a local man, a separatist, with no country in 
common with the gentlemen who sit around 
me here, or who fill the other house of Con- 



112 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

gress ? Heaven forbid ! Where is the flag of 
the Republic to remain ? Where is the eagle 
still to tower ? or is he to cower, and shrink, 
and fall to* the ground? Why, sir, our ances- 
tors, our fathers and our grandfathers, those of 
them that are yet living amongst us with pro- 
longed lives, would rebuke and reproach us ; 
and our children and our grandchildren would 
cry out shame upon us, if we of this generation 
should dishonor these ensigns of the power of 
the Government and the harmony of that Union 
which is every day felt among us with so much 
joy and gratitude. What is to become of the 
army? What is to become of the navy? What 
is to become of the public lands? How is each 
of the thirty States to defend itself ? I know, 
although the idea has not been stated dis- 
tinctly, there is to be, or it is supposed possible 
that there will be, a Southern Confederacy. I 
do not mean, when I allude to this statement, 
that any one seriously contemplates such a 
state of things. I do not mean to say that it 
is true, but I have heard it suggested elsewhere, 
that the idea has been entertained, that, aftei 
the dissolution of this Union, a Southern Con- 
federacy might be formed. I am sorry, sir, that 
it has ever been thought of, talked of, in the 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. II3 

wildest flights of human imagination. But the 
idea, so far as it exists, must be of a separation, 
assigning the slave States to one side, and the 
free States to the other. Sir, I may express 
myself too strongly, perhaps, but there are im- 
possibilities in the natural as well as in the phy- 
sical world, and I hold the idea of the separation 
of these States, those that are free to form one 
government, and those that are slave-holding 
to form another, as such an impossibility. We 
could not separate the States by any such line, 
if we were to draw it. We could not sit down 
here to-day and draw a line of separation that 
would satisfy any five men in the country. 
There are natural causes that would keep and 
tie us together, and there are social and do- 
mestic relations which we could not break if 
we would, and which we should not if we 
could. 

Sir, nobody can look over the face of this 
country at the present moment, nobody can 
see where its population is the most dense and 
growing, without being ready to admit, and 
compelled to admit, that erelong the strength 
of America will be in the Valley of the Missis- 
sippi. Well, now, sir, I beg to inquire what 
the wildest enthusiast has to say on the possi- 



114 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

bility of cutting that river in two, and leaving 
free States at its source and on its branches, 
and slave States down near its mouth, each 
forming a separate government ? Pray, sir, 
let me say to the people of this country, that 
these things are worthy of their pondering and 
of their consideration. Here, sir, are five mil- 
lions of freemen in the free States north of the 
river Ohio. Can anybody suppose that this 
population can be severed, by a line that di- 
vides them from the territory of a foreign and 
alien government, down somewhere, the Lord 
knows where, upon the lower banks of the Mis- 
sissippi ? What would become of Missouri? 
Will she join the arrondissernent of the slave 
States ? Shall the man from the Yellowstone 
and the Platte be connected, in the new repub- 
lic, with the man who lives on the southern 
extremity of the Cape of Florida ? Sir, I am 
ashamed to pursue this line of remark. I dis- 
like it, I have an utter disgust for it. I would 
rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, 
pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen 
talk of secession. To break up this great Gov- 
ernment ! to dismember this glorious country ! 
to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as 
Europe for two centuries has never beheld in 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. II5 

any government or any people ! No, sir ! no, 
sir! There will be no secession! Gentlemen 
are not serious when they talk of secession. 

Sir, I hear there is to be a convention held 
at Nashville. I am bound to believe that if 
worthy gentlemen meet at Nashville in conven- 
tion, their object will be to adopt conciliatory 
counsels ; to advise the South to forbearance 
and moderation, and to advise the North to 
forbearance and moderation ; and to inculcate 
principles of brotherly love and affection, and 
attachment to the Constitution of the country 
as it now is. I believe, if the convention meet 
at all, it will be for this purpose ; for certainly, 
if they meet for any purpose hostile to the 
Union, they have been singularly inappropri- 
ate in their selection of a place. I remem- 
ber, sir, that, when the treaty of Amiens was 
concluded between France and England, a 
sturdy Englishman and a distinguished orator, 
who regarded the conditions of the peace as 
ignominious to England, said in the House of 
Commons, that if King William could know 
the terms of that treaty, he would turn in his 
cofifin ! Let me commend this saying to Mr. 
Windham, in all its emphasis and in all its 
force, to any persons who shall meet at Nash- 



Il6 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

ville for the purpose of concerting measures 
for the overthrow of this Union over the bones 
of Andrew Jackson. * * * 

And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking 
of the possibiHty or utiHty of secession, instead 
of dwelling in those caverns of darkness, in- 
stead of groping with those ideas so full of all 
that is horrid and horrible, let us come out 
into the light of the day ; let us enjoy the 
fresh air of Liberty and Union ; let us cherish 
those hopes which belong to us ; let us devote 
ourselves to those great objects that are fit for 
our consideration and our action; let us raise 
our conceptions to the magnitude and the im- 
portance of the duties that devolve upon us ; let 
our comprehension be as broad as the country 
for which we act, our aspirations as high as its 
certain destiny ; let us not be pigmies in a case 
that calls for men. Never did there devolve 
on any generation of men higher trusts than 
now devolve upon us, for the preservation of 
this Constitution and the harmony and peace of 
all who are destined to live under it. Let us 
make our generation one of the strongest and 
brightest links in that golden chain which is 
destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people 
of all the States to this Constitution for ages to 



THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION. II7 

come. We have a great, popular, Constitu- 
tional Government, guarded by law and by 
judicature, and defended by the affections of the 
whole people. No monarchical throne presses 
these States together, no iron chain of military 
power encircles them ; they live and stand un- 
der a Government popular in its form, represen- 
tative in its character, founded upon principles 
of equality, and so constructed, we hope, as 
to last forever. In all its history it has been 
beneficent ; it has trodden down no man's lib- 
erty; it has crushed no State. Its daily respira- 
tion is liberty and patriotism ; its yet youthful 
veins are full of enterprise, courage, and honor- 
able love of glory and renown. Large before, 
the country has now, by recent events, become 
vastly larger. This Republic now extends, with 
a vast breadth across the whole continent. The 
two great seas of the world wash the one and 
the other shore. We realize, on a mighty 
scale, the beautiful description of the ornamen- 
tal border of the buckler of Achilles : 

'* Now, the broad shield complete, the artist crowned 
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round ; 
In living silver seemed the waves to roll, 
And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole." 



HENRY CLAY, 

OF KENTUCKY. 

(born 1777, DIED 1852.) 



ON THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 ; UNITED STATES SEN- 
ATE, JULY 22, 1850. 

Mr. President : 

In the progress of this debate it has been 
again and again argued that perfect tranquilhty 
reigns throughout the country, and that there 
is no disturbance threatening its peace, en- 
dangering its safety, but that which was pro- 
duced by busy, restless poHticians. It has been 
maintained that the surface of the public mind 
is perfectly smooth and undisturbed by a single 
billow. I most heartily wish I could concur in 
this picture of general tranquillity that has 
been drawn upon both sides of the Senate. I 
am no alarmist ; nor, I thank God, at the ad- 
vanced age at which His providence has been 
pleased to allow me to reach, am I very easily 
alarmed by any human event ; but I totally 
118 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1 8^0. II9 

misread the signs of the times, if there be that 
state of profound peace and quiet, that absence 
of all just cause of apprehension of future dan- 
ger to this confederacy, which appears to be en- 
tertained by some other senators. Mr. Presi- 
dent, all the tendencies of the times, I lament 
to say, are toward disquietude, if not more fatal 
consequences. When before, in the midst of 
profound peace with all the nations of the 
earth, have we seen a convention, representing 
a considerable portion of one great part of the 
Republic, meet to deliberate about measures of 
future safety in connection with great interests 
of that quarter of the country ? When before 
have we seen, not one, but more — some half a 
dozen legislative bodies solemnly resolving that 
if any one of these measures — the admission 
of California, the adoption of the Wilmot 
proviso, the abolition of slavery in the District 
of Columbia — should be adopted by Congress, 
measures of an extreme character, for the safety 
of the great interests to which I refer, in a par- 
ticular section of the country, would be resorted 
to ? For years, this subject of the abolition of 
slavery, even within this District of Columbia, 
small as is the number of slaves here, has been 
a source of constant irritation and disquiet. So 



I20 HENRY CLAY. 

of the subject of the recovery of fugitive slaves 
who have escaped from their lawful owners : 
not a mere border contest, as has been sup- 
posed — although there, undoubtedly, it has 
given rise to more irritation than in other por- 
tions of the Union — but everywhere through- 
out the slave-holding country it has been felt as 
a great evil, a great wrong which required the 
intervention of congressional power. But these 
two subjects, unpleasant as has been the agita- 
tion to which they have given rise, are nothing 
in comparison to those which have sprung out 
of the acquisitions recently made from the Re- 
public of Mexico. These are not only great 
and leading causes of just apprehension as 
respects the future, but all the minor circum- 
stances of the day intimate danger ahead, what- 
ever may be its final issue and consequence. 

Mr. President, I will not dwell upon other 
concomitant causes, all having the same ten- 
dency, and all well calculated to awaken, to 
arouse us — if, as I hope the fact is, we are all of 
us sincerely desirous of preserving this Union — 
to rouse us to dangers which really exist, with- 
out underrating them upon the one hand, or 
magnifying them upon the other. * * * 

It has been objected against this measure 



THE COMPROMISE OF 18^0. 121 

that it is a compromise. It has been said that 
it is a compromise of principle, or of a principle. 
Mr. President, what is a compromise? It is a 
work of mutual concession — an agreement in 
which there are reciprocal stipulations — a work 
in which, for the sake of peace and concord, 
one party abates his extreme demands in con- 
sideration of an abatement of extreme demands 
by the other party : it is a measure of mutual 
concession — a measure of mutual sacrifice. Un- 
doubtedly, Mr. President, in all such measures 
of compromise, one party would be very glad 
to get what he wants, and reject what he does 
not desire, but which the other party wants. 
But when he comes to reflect that, from the 
nature of the Government and its operations, 
and from those with whom he is dealing, it 
is necessary upon his part, in order to secure 
what he wants, to grant something to the other 
side, he should be reconciled to the concession 
which he has made, in consequence of the con- 
cession which he is to receive, if there is no 
great principle involved, such as a violation of 
the Constitution of the United States. I ad- 
mit that such a compromise as that ought 
never to be sanctioned or adopted. But I now 
call upon any senator in his place to point out 



122 HENRY CLAY. 

from the beginning to the end, from California 
to New Mexico, a solitary provision in this bill 
which is violative of the Constitution of the 
United States. 

Sir, adjustments in the shape of compromise 
may be made without producing any such con- 
sequences as have been apprehended. There 
may be a mutual forbearance. You forbear on 
your side to insist upon the application of the 
restriction denominated the Wilmot proviso. 
Is there any violation of principle there ? The 
most that can be said, even assuming the power 
to pass the Wilmot proviso, which is denied, is 
that there is a forbearance to exercise, not a 
violation of, the power to pass the proviso. So, 
upon the other hand, if there was a power in 
the Constitution of the United States authoriz- 
ing the establishment of slavery in any of the 
Territories — a power, however, which is con- 
troverted by a large portion of this Senate — if 
there was a power under the Constitution to 
establish slavery, the forbearance to exercise 
that power is no violation of the Constitution, 
any more than the Constitution is violated by a 
forbearance to exercise numerous powers, that 
might be specified, that are granted in the Con- 
stitution, and that remain dormant until they 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1 8^0. 1 23 

come to be exercised by the proper legislative 
authorities. It is said that the bill presents the 
state of coercion — that members are coerced, in 
order to get what they want, to vote for that 
which they disapprove. Why, sir, what coer- 
cion is there ? * * * Can it be said upon 
the part of our Northern friends, because they 
have not got the Wilmot proviso incorporated 
in the territorial part of the bill, that they are 
coerced — wanting California, as they do, so 
much — to vote for the bill, if they do vote for 
it ? Sir, they might have imitated the noble 
example of my friend (Senator Cooper, of Penn- 
sylvania), from that State upon whose devotion 
to this Union I place one of my greatest re- 
liances for its preservation. What was the 
course of my friend upon this subject of the 
Wilmot proviso ? He voted for it ; and he 
could go back to his constituents and say, as 
all of you could go back and say to your con- 
stituents, if you chose to do so — " We wanted 
the Wilmot proviso in the bill ; we tried to get 
it in ; but the majority of the Senate was 
against it." The question then came up 
whether we should lose California, which has 
got an interdiction in her constitution, which, 
in point of value and duration, is worth a thou- 



124 HENRY CLAY. 

sand Wilmot provisos ; we were induced, as 
my honorable friend would say, to take the bill 
and the whole of it together, although we were 
disappointed in our votes with respect to the 
Wilmot proviso — to take it, whatever omissions 
may have been made, on account of the supe- 
rior amount of good it contains. * * * 

Not the reception of the treaty of peace 
negotiated at Ghent, nor any other event which 
has occurred during my progress in public life, 
ever gave such unbounded and universal satis- 
faction as the settlement of the Missouri com- 
promise. We may argue from like causes like 
effects. Then, indeed, there was great excite- 
ment. Then, indeed, all the legislatures of the 
North called out for the exclusion of Missouri, 
and all the legislatures of the South called out 
for her admission as a State. Then, as now, 
the country was agitated like the ocean in the 
midst of a turbulent storm. But now, more 
than then, has this agitation been increased. 
Now, more than then, are the dangers which 
exist, if the controversy remains unsettled, 
more aggravated and more to be dreaded. The 
idea of disunion was then scarcely a low whis- 
per. Now, it has become a familar language in 
certain portions of the country. The public 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1 8^0. 12$ 

mind and the public heart are becoming famil- 
iarized with that most dangerous and fatal of 
all events — the disunion of the States. People 
begin to contend that this is not so bad a thing 
as they had supposed. Like the progress in all 
human alTairs, as we approach danger it dis- 
appears, it diminishes in our conception, and 
we no longer regard it with that awful appre- 
hension of consequences that we did before we 
came into contact with it. Everywhere now 
there is a state of things, a degree of alarm and 
apprehension, and determination to fight, as 
they regard it, against the aggressions of the 
North, That did not so demonstrate itself at 
the period of the Missouri compromise. It was 
followed, in consequence of the adoption of the 
measure which settled the difificulty of Missouri, 
by peace, harmony, and tranquillity. So, now, 
I infer, from the greater amount of agitation, 
from the greater amount of danger, that, if you 
adopt the measures under consideration, they, 
too, will be followed by the same amount of 
contentment, satisfaction, peace, and tranquil- 
lity, which ensued after the Missouri com- 
promise. * * * 

The responsibility of this great measure 
passes from the hands of the committee, and 



126 HENRY CLA Y. 

from my hands. They know, and I know, that 
it is an awful and tremendous responsibihty. 
I hope that you will meet it with a just con- 
ception and a true appreciation of its magni- 
tude, and the magnitude of the consequences 
that may ensue from your decision one way or 
the other. The alternatives, I fear, which the 
measure presents, are concord and increased dis- 
cord ; a servile civil war, originating in its causes 
on the lower Rio Grande, and terminating pos- 
sibly in its consequences on the upper Rio 
Grande in the Santa F6 country, or the restora- 
tion of harmony and fraternal kindness. I 
believe from the bottom of my soul, that the 
measure is the reunion of this Union. I believe 
it is the dove of peace, which, taking its aerial 
flight from the dome of the Capitol, carries the 
glad tidings of assured peace and restored har- 
mony to all the remotest extremities of this dis- 
tracted land. I believe that it will be attended 
with all these beneficent effects. And now let 
us discard all resentment, all passions, all petty 
jealousies, all personal desires, all love of place, 
all hankerings after the gilded crumbs which fall 
from the table of power. Let us forget popular 
fears, from whatever quarter they may spring. 
Let us go to the limpid fountain of unadulter- 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 12/ 

ated patriotism, and, performing a solemn lus- 
tration, return divested of all selfish, sinister, 
and sordid impurities, and think alone of our 
God, our country, our consciences, and our glo- 
rious Union — that Union without which we 
shall be torn into hostile fragments, and sooner 
or later become the victims of military des- 
potism, or foreign domination. 

Mr. President, what is an individual man ? 
An atom, almost invisible without a magnifying 
glass — a mere speck upon the surface of the im- 
mense universe ; not a second in time, compared 
to immeasurable, never-beginning, and never- 
ending eternity ; a drop of water in the great 
deep, which evaporates and is borne off by the 
winds ; a grain of sand, which is soon gathered 
to the dust from which it sprung. Shall a being 
so small, so petty, so fleeting, so evanescent, 
oppose itself to the onward march of a great 
nation, which is to subsist for ages and ages to 
come ; oppose itself to that long line of poster- 
ity which, issuing from our loins, will endure 
during the existence of the world ? Forbid it, 
God. Let us look to our country and our 
cause, elevate ourselves to the dignity of pure 
and disinterested patriots, and save our country 
from all impending dangers. What if, in the 



128 HENRY CLAY. 

march of this nation to greatness and power, 
we should be buried beneath the wheels that 
propel it onward ! What are we — what is any 
man — worth who is not ready and willing to 
sacrifice himself for the benefit of his country 
when it is necessary ? * * * 

If this Union shall become separated, new 
unions, new confederacies will arise. And with 
respect to this, if there be any — I hope there 
is no one in the Senate — before whose imagina- 
tion is flitting the idea of a great Southern Con- 
federacy to take possession of the Balize and 
the mouth of the Mississippi, I say in my place 
never ! never ! NEVER ! will we who occupy the 
broad waters of the Mississippi and its upper 
tributaries consent that any foreign flag shall 
float at the Balize or upon the turrets of the 
Crescent City — NEVER ! NEVER ! I call upon all 
the South. Sir, we have had hard words, 
bitter words, bitter thoughts, unpleasant feel- 
ings toward each other in the progress of this 
great measure. Let us forget them. Let us 
sacrifice these feelings. Let us go to the altar 
of our country and swear, as the oath was taken 
of old, that we will stand by her ; that we will 
support her; that we will uphold her Constitu- 
tion ; that we will preserve her Union ; and 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 1 29 

that we will pass this great, comprehensive, 
and healing system of measures, which will 
hush all the jarring elements, and bring peace 
and tranquillity to our homes. 

Let me, Mr. President, in conclusion, say 
that the most disastrous consequences would 
occur, in my opinion, were we to go home, 
doing nothing to satisfy and tranquillize the 
country upon these great questions. What will 
be the judgment of mankind, what the judg- 
ment of that portion of mankind who are look- 
ing upon the progress of this scheme of self- 
government as being that which holds the 
highest hopes and expectations of ameliorating 
the condition of mankind — what will their 
judgment be ? Will not all the monarchs of 
the Old World pronounce our 'glorious Republic 
a disgraceful failure ? What will be the judg- 
ment of our constituents, when we return to 
them and they ask us : " How have you left 
your country? Is all quiet — all happy? Are 
all the seeds of distraction or division crushed 
and dissipated ? " And, sir, when you come 
into the bosom of your family, when you come 
to converse with the partner of your fortunes, 
of your happiness, and of your sorrows, and 
when in the midst of the common offspring of 



I30 HENRY CLAY. 

both of you, she asks you : " Is there any dan- 
ger of civil war ? Is there any danger of the 
torch being appHed to any portion of the 
country ? Have you settled the questions 
which you have been so long discussing and 
deliberating upon at Washington? Is all peace 
and all quiet?" what response, Mr. President, 
can you make to that wife of your choice and 
those children with whom you have been blessed 
by God? Will you go home and leave all in 
disorder and confusion — all unsettled — all open? 
The contentions and agitations of the past will 
be increased and augmented by the agitations 
resulting from our neglect to decide them. Sir, 
we shall stand condemned by all human judg- 
ment below, and of that above it is not for me 
to speak. We shall stand condemned in our 
own consciences, by our own constituents, and 
by our own country. The measure may be de- 
feated. I have been aware that its passage for 
many days was not absolutely certain. From 
the first to the last, I hoped and believed it 
would pass, because from the first to the last I 
believed it was founded on the principles of 
just and righteous concession of mutual concilia- 
tion. I believe that it deals unjustly by no 
part of the Republic ; that it saves their honor, 



THE COMPROMISE OE 1850. 13I 

and, as far as it is dependent upon Congress, 
saves the interests of all quarters of the country. 
But, sir, I have known that the decision of its 
fate depended upon four or five votes in the 
Senate of the United States, whose ultimate 
judgment we could not count upon the one side 
or the other with absolute certainty. Its fate 
is now committed to the Senate, and to those 
five or six votes to which I have referred. It 
may be defeated. It is possible that, for the 
chastisement of our sins and transgressions, the 
rod of Providence may be still applied to us, 
may be still suspended over us. But, if de- 
feated, it will be a triumph of ultraism and im- 
practicability — a triumph of a most extraordi- 
nary conjunction of extremes ; a victory won by 
aboHtionism ; a victory achieved by freesoilism ; 
a victory of discord and agitation over peace 
and tranquillity ; and I pray to Almighty God 
that it may not, in consequence of the inauspi- 
cious result, lead to the most unhappy and dis- 
astrous consequences to our beloved country. 

Mr. Barnwell: — It is not my intention to 
reply to the argument of the Senator from Ken- 
tucky, but there were expressions used by him 
not a little disrespectful to a friend whom I hold 
very dear. * * * It is true that his politi- 



132 HENRY CLAY. 

cal opinions differ very widely from those of 
the Senator from Kentucky. It may be true, 
that he, with many great statesmen, may Believe 
that the Wilmot proviso is a grievance to be re- 
sisted " to the utmost extremity " by those whose 
rights it destroys and whose honor it degrades. 
It is true that he may believe * * * that 
the admission of California will be the passing 
of the Wilmot proviso, when we here in Con- 
gress give vitality to an act otherwise totally 
dead, and by our legislation exclude slavehold- 
ers from that whole broad territory on the 
Pacific ; and, entertaining this opinion, he may 
have declared that the contingency will then 
have occurred which will, in the judgment of 
most of the slave-holding States, as expressed by 
their resolutions, justify resistance as to an in- 
tolerable aggression. If he does entertain and 
has expressed such sentiments, he is not to be 
held up as peculiarly a disunionist. Allow me 
to say, in reference to this matter, I regret that 
you have brought it about, but it is true that 
this epithet " disunionist " is likely soon to 
have very little terror in it in the South. Words 
do not make things. " Rebel " was designed as 
a very odious term when applied by those who 
would have trampled on the rights of our an- 



THE COMPROMISE OF l8^0. 1 33 

cestors, but I believe that the expression became 
not an ungrateful one to the ears of those who 
resisted them. It was not the lowest term of 
abuse to call those who were conscious that 
they were struggling against oppression ; and 
let me assure gentlemen that the term disun- 
ionist is rapidly assuming at the South the 
meaning which rebel took when it was baptized 
in the blood of Warren at Bunker Hill, and 
illustrated by the gallantry of Jasper at Fort 
Moultrie. ^ * * 

Mr. Clay: — Mr. President, I said nothing 
with respect to the character of Mr. Rhett, for 
I might as well name him. I know him person- 
ally, and have some respect for him. But, if 
he pronounced the sentiment attributed to him 
— of raising the standard of disunion and of re- 
sistance to the common government, whatever 
he has been, if he follows up that declaration 
by corresponding overt acts, he will be a traitor, 
and I hope he will meet the fate of a traitor. 

The President: — The Chair will be under 
the necessity of ordering the gallery to be 
cleared if there is again the slightest interrup- 
tion. He has once already given warning that 
he is under the necessity of keeping order. The 
Senate chamber is not a theatre. 



134 HENRY CLAY. 

Mr. Clay *. — Mr. President, I have heard with 
pain and regret a confirmation of the remark I 
made, that the sentiment of disunion is becom- 
ing famiHar. I hope it is confined to South 
Carolina. I do not regard as my duty what the 
honorable Senator seems to regard as his. If 
Kentucky to-morrow unfurls the banner of re- 
sistance unjustly, I never will fight under that 
banner. I owe a paramount allegiance to the 
whole Union — a subordinate one to my own 
State. When my State is right — when it has a 
^ause for resistance — when tyranny, and wrong, 
and oppression insufferable arise, I will then 
share her fortunes ; but if she summons me to 
the battle-field, or to support her in any cause 
which is unjust, against the Union, never, never 
will I engage with her in such cause. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(BORN 181I, DIED 1884.) 



ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT, 

BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS ANTI-SLAVERY 

SOCIETY, AT BOSTON, JANUARY 27, 1853. 

Mr. Chairman : 

I have to present, from the business commit- 
tee, the following resolution : 

Resolved ; That the object of this society is 
now, as it has always been, to convince our 
countrymen, by arguments addressed to their 
hearts and consciences, that slave-holding is a 
heinous crime, and that the duty, safety, and 
interest of all concerned demand its immediate 
abolition without expatriation. 

I wish, Mr. Chairman, to notice some objec- 
tions that have been made to our course ever 
since Mr. Garrison began his career, and which 
have been lately urged again, with considerable 
force and emphasis, in the columns of the Lon- 
135 



136 WENDELL PHILLLPS. 

don Leader, the able organ of a very respectable 
and influential class in England. * * * The 
charges to which I refer are these: That, in 
dealing with slave-holders and their apologists, 
we indulge in fierce denunciations, instead of 
appealing to their reason and common sense 
by plain statements and fair argument ; that we 
might have won the sympathies and support of 
the nation, if we would have submitted to 
argue this question with a manly patience; but, 
instead of this, we have outraged the feelings 
of the community by attacks, unjust and un- 
necessarily severe, on its most valued institu- 
tions, and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate 
abuse of leading men, who were often honest 
in their intentions, however mistaken in their 
views ; that we have utterly neglected the 
ample means that lay around us to convert the 
nation, submitted to no discipline, formed no 
plan, been guided by no foresight, but hurried 
on in childish, reckless, blind, and hot-headed 
zeal, — bigots in the narrowness of our views, 
and fanatics in our blind fury of invective and 
malignant judgment of other men's motives. 

There are some who come upon our platform, 
and give us the aid of names and reputations 
less burdened than ours with popular odium, 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 37 

who are perpetually urging us to exercise 
charity in our judgments of those about us, and 
to consent to argue these questions. These 
men are ever parading their wish to draw a Hne 
between themselves and us, because they jnust 
be permitted X.O \^^\\.^ — to trust more to reason 
than feeling, — to indulge a generous charity, — 
to rely on the sure influence of simple truth, 
uttered in love, etc., etc. I reject with scorn all 
these implications that our judgments are un- 
charitable, — that we are lacking in patience, — 
that we have any other dependence than on the 
simple truth, spoken with Christian frankness, 
yet with Christian love. These lectures, to which 
you, sir, and all of us, have so often listened, 
would be impertinent, if they were not rather 
ridiculous for the gross ignorance they betray of 
the community, of the cause, and of the whole 
course of its friends. 

The article in the Leader to which I refer is 
signed " lON," and may be found in the Libera- 
tor of December 17, 1852. * * * "Ion" 
quotes Mr Garrison's original declaration in the 
Liberator : "I am aware that many object to 
the severity of my language ; but is there not 
cause for severity ? I will be as harsh as truth 
and as uncompromising as justice. I am in 



138 WENDELL PHLLLIPS. 

earnest, — I will not equivocate, — I will not ex- 
cuse, — I will not retreat a single inch, — AND I 
WILL BE HEARD. It \s pretended ihdit I am re- 
tarding the cause of emancipation by the 
coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy 
of my measures. The charge is not true. On 
this question, my influence, humble as it is, 
is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, 
and shall be felt in coming years, not per- 
niciously, but beneficially ; not as a curse, but 
as a blessing ; and posterity will bear testimony 
that I was right. I desire to thank God that 
He enables me to disregard ' the fear of man 
which bringeth a snare,' and to speak His truth 
in its simplicity and power." * * * 

" Ion's " charges are the old ones, that we Ab- 
olitionists are hurting our own cause ; that, in- 
stead of waiting for the community to come up 
to our views, and endeavoring to remove preju- 
dice and enlighten ignorance by patient ex- 
planation and fair argument, we fall at once, 
like children, to abusing every thing and every- 
body ; that we imagine zeal will supply the 
place of common sense ; that we have never 
shown any sagacity in adapting our means to 
our ends ; have never studied the national 
character, or attempted to make use of the 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 39 

materials which lay all about us to influence 
public opinion, but by blind, childish, obstinate 
fury and indiscriminate denunciation, have be- 
come " honestly impotent, and conscientious 
hinderances." 

I claim, before you who know the true state 
of the case, I claim for the antislavery move- 
ment with which this society is identified, that, 
looking back over its whole course, and con- 
sidering the men connected with it in the mass, 
it has been marked by sound judgment, un- 
erring foresight, the most sagacious adaptation 
of means to ends, the strictest self-discipline, 
the most thorough research, and an amount of 
patient and manly argument addressed to the 
conscience and intellect of the nation, such as 
no other cause of the kind, in England or this 
country, has ever offered. I claim, also, that 
its course has been marked by a cheerful sur- 
render of all individual claims to merit or 
leadership, — the most cordial welcoming of the 
slightest effort, of every honest attempt, to 
lighten or to break the chain of the slave. I 
need not waste time by repeating the superflu- 
ous confession that we are men, and therefore 
do not claim to be perfect. Neither would I 
be understood as denying that we use denuncia- 



I40 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tion, and ridicule, and every other weapon that 
the human mind knows. We must plead 
guilty, if there be guilt in not knowing how 
to separate the sin from the sinner. With all 
the fondness for abstractions attributed to us, 
we are not yet capable of that. We are fight- 
ing a momentous battle at desperate odds, — 
one against a thousand. Every weapon that 
ability or ignorance, wit, wealth, prejudice, or 
fashion can command, is pointed against us. 
The guns are shotted to their lips. The ar- 
rows are poisoned. Fighting against such an 
array, we cannot afford to confine ourselves to 
any one weapon. The cause is not ours, so that 
we might, rightfully, postpone or put in peril 
the victory by moderating our demands, stifling 
our convictions, or filing down our rebukes, to 
gratify any sickly taste of our own, or to spare 
the delicate nerves of our neighbor. Our clients 
are three millions of Christian slaves, standing 
dumb suppliants at the threshold of the Chris- 
tian world. They have no voice but ours to 
utter their complaints, or to demand justice. 
The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the literature, 
the prejudices, the political arrangements, the 
present self-interest of the country, are all 
against us. God has given us no weapon but 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. I4I 

the truth, faithfully uttered, and addressed, 
with the old prophets' directness, to the con- 
science of the individual sinner. The elements 
which control public opinion and mould the 
masses are against us. We can but pick off 
here and there a man from the triumphant ma- 
jority. We have facts for those who think, 
arguments for those who reason ; but he who 
cannot be reasoned out of his prejudices must 
be laughed out of them ; he who cannot be 
argued out of his selfishness must be shamed 
out of it by the mirror of his hateful self held 
up relentlessly before his eyes. We live in a 
land where every man makes broad his phylac- 
tery, inscribing thereon, *' All men are created 
equal," — " God hath made of one blood all na- 
tions of men." It seems to us that in such 
a land there must be, on this question of 
slavery, sluggards to be awakened, as well as 
doubters to be convinced. Many more, we 
verily believe, of the first than of the last. 
There are far more dead hearts to be quick- 
ened, than confused intellects to be cleared 
up, — more dumb dogs to be made to speak, 
than doubting consciences to be enlightened. 
We have use, then, sometimes, for something 
beside argument. 



142 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

What is the denunciation with which we are 
charged ? It is endeavoring, in our faltering 
human speech, to declare the enormity of the 
sin of making merchandize of men, — of sepa- 
rating husband and wife, — taking the infant 
from its mother and selHng the daughter to 
prostitution, — of a professedly Christian nation 
denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth 
man and woman of its population, and making 
it illegal for "two or three " to meet together, 
except a white man be present ! What is this 
harsh criticism of motives with which we are 
charged ? It is simply holding the intelligent 
and deliberate actor responsible for the char- 
acter and consequences of his acts. Is there 
any thing inherently wrong in such denuncia- 
tion of such criticism? This we may claim, — 
we have never judged a man but out of his own 
mouth. We have seldom, if ever, held him to 
account, except for acts of which he and his 
own friends were proud. All that we ask the 
world and thoughtful men to note are the prin- 
ciples and deeds on which the American pulpit 
and American public men plume themselves. 
We always allow our opponents to paint their 
own pictures. Our humble duty is to stand by 
and assure the spectators that what they would 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 43 

take for a knave or a hypocrite is really, in 
American estimation, a Doctor of Divinity or a 
Secretary of State, 

The South is one great brothel, where half a 
million of women are flogged to prostitution, 
or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honor- 
able. The public squares of half our great 
cities echo to the wail of families torn asunder 
at the auction-block; no one of our fair rivers 
that has not closed over the negro seeking in 
death a refuge from a life too wretched to bear ; 
thousands of fugitives skulk along our high- 
ways, afraid to tell their names, and trembling 
at the sight of a human being ; free men are 
kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into 
that hell of slavery ; and now and then one, as 
if by miracle, after long years returns to make 
men aghast with his tale. The press says, " It 
is all right"; and the pulpit cries, "Amen." 
They print the Bible in every tongue in which 
man utters his prayers ; and they get the 
money to do so by agreeing never to give the 
book, in the language our mothers taught us, 
to any negro, free or bond, south of Mason 
and Dixon's line. The press says, " It is all 
right " ; and the pulpit cries, " Amen." The 
slave lifts up his imploring eyes, and sees in 



144 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

every face but ours the face of an enemy. 
Prove to me now that harsh rebuke, indignant 
denunciation, scathing sarcasm, and pitiless 
ridicule are wholly and always unjustifiable ; 
else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw 
away any weapon which ever broke up the 
crust of an ignorant prejudice, roused a slum- 
bering conscience, shamed a proud sinner, or 
changed in any way the conduct of a human 
being. Our aim is to alter public opinion. Did 
we live in a market, our talk should be of dol- 
lars and cents, and we would seek to prove pnly 
that slavery was an unprofitable investment. 
Were the nation one great, pure church, we 
would sit down and reason of " righteousness, 
temperance, and judgment to come." Had slav- 
ery fortified itself in a college, we would load 
our cannons with cold facts, and wing our ar- 
rows with arguments. But we happen to live 
in the world, — the world made up of thought 
and impulse, of self-conceit and self-interest, of 
weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must 
reach all. Our object is not to make every man 
a Christian or a philosopher, but to induce every 
one to aid in the abolition of slavery. We ex- 
pect to accomplish our object long before the 
nation is made over into saints or elevated into 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. I45 

philosophers. To change pubHc opinion, we 
use the very tools by which it was formed. 
That is, all such as an honest man may touch. 

All this I am not only ready to allow, but I 
should be ashamed to think of the slave, or to 
look into the face of my fellow-man, if it were 
otherwise. It is the only thing which justifies 
us to our own consciences, and makes us able 
to say we have done, or at least tried to do, our 
duty. 

So far, however you distrust my philosophy, 
you will not doubt my statements. That we 
have denounced and rebuked with unsparing 
fidelity will not be denied. Have we not also 
addressed ourselves to that other duty, of argu- 
ing our question thoroughly ? — of using due 
discretion and fair sagacity in endeavoring to 
promote our cause ? Yes, we have. Every 
statement we have made has been doubted. 
Every principle we have laid down has been 
denied by overwhelming majorities against us. 
No one step has ever been gained but by the 
most laborious research and the most exhaust- 
ing argument. And no question has ever, since 
Revolutionary days, been so thoroughly inves- 
tigated or argued here, as that of slavery. Of 
that research and that argument, of the whole 



146 WENDELL PHLLLLPS. 

of it, the old-fashioned, fanatical, crazy Garri- 
sonian antislavery movement has been the 
author. From this band of men has proceeded 
every important argument or idea which has 
been broached on the antislavery question from 
1830 to the present time. * * * I recog- 
nize, as fully as any one can, the ability of the 
new laborers. * * * I do not mean, either, 
to assert that they have in every instance bor- 
rowed from our treasury their facts and argu- 
ments. Left to themselves, they would proba- 
bly have looked up the one and originated the 
other. As a matter of fact, however, they have 
generally made use of the materials collected to 
their hands. * * * When once brought 
fully into the struggle, they have found it 
necessary to adopt the same means, to rely on 
the same arguments, to hold up the same men 
and the same measures to public reprobation, 
with the same bold rebuke and unsparing invec- 
tive that we have used. All their conciliatory 
bearing, their painstaking moderation, their con- 
stant and anxious endeavor to draw abroad line 
between their camp and ours, have been thrown 
away. Just so far as they have been effective 
laborers, they have found, as we have, their 
hands against every man, and every man's hand 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 47 

against them. The most experienced of them 
are ready to acknowledge that our plan has 
been wise, our course efficient, and that our un- 
popularity is no fault of ours, but flows neces- 
sarily and unavoidably from our position. " I 
should suspect," says old Fuller, "that his 
preaching had no salt in it, if no galled horse 
did wince." Our friends find, after all, that 
men do not so much hate us as the truth we 
utter and the light we bring. They find that 
the community are not the honest seekers after 
truth which they fancied, but selfish politicians 
and sectarian bigots, who shiver, like Alexan- 
der's butler, whenever the sun shines on them. 
Experience has driven these new laborers back 
to our method. We have no quarrel with them 
— would not steal one wreath of their laurels. 
All we claim is, that, if they are to be compli- 
mented as prudent, moderate, Christian, saga- 
cious, statesmanlike reformers, we deserve the 
same praise ; for they have done nothing that 
we, in our measure, did not attempt before. 

I claim this, that the cause, in its recent as- 
pect, has put on nothing but timidity. It has 
taken to itself no new weapons of recent years ; 
it has become more compromising, — that is all! 
It has become neither more persuasive, more 



148 WENDELL PHLLLLPS. 

learned, more Christian, more charitable, nor 
more effective than for the twenty years pre- 
ceding. Mr. Hale, the head of the Free Soil 
movement, after a career in the Senate that 
would do honor to any man, — after a six years' 
course which entitles him to the respect and 
confidence of the antislavery public, — can put 
his name, within the last month, to an appeal 
from the city of Washington, signed by a 
Houston and a Cass, for a monument to be 
raised to Henry Clay ! If that be the test of 
charity and courtesy, we cannot give it to the 
world. Some of the leaders of the Free Soil 
party of Massachusetts, after exhausting the 
whole capacity of our language to paint the 
treachery of Daniel Webster to the cause of 
liberty, and the evil they thought he was able 
and seeking to-do, — after that, could feel it in 
their hearts to parade themselves in the funeral 
procession got up to do him honor! In this 
we allow we cannot follow them. The defer- 
ence which every gentleman owes to the proprie- 
ties of social life, that self-respect and regard to 
consistency which is every man's duty, — these, if 
no deeper feelings, will ever prevent us from 
giving such proofs of this newly invented 
Christian courtesy. We do not play politics, 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 49 

antislavery is no half-jest with us ; it is a terri- 
ble earnest, with Hfe or death, worse than Hfe 
or death, on the issue. It is no lawsuit, where 
it matters not to the good feeling of opposing 
counsel which way the verdict goes, and where 
advocates can shake hands after the decision as 
pleasantly as before. When we think of such a 
man as Henry Clay, his long life, his mighty 
influence cast always into the scale against the 
slave, of that irresistible fascination with which 
he moulded every one to his will ; when we re- 
member that, his conscience acknowledging the 
justice of our cause, and his heart open on every 
other side to the gentlest impulses, he could sacri- 
fice so remorselessly his convictions and the wel- 
fare of millions to his low ambition ; when we 
think how the slave trembled at the sound of 
his voice, and that, from a multitude of breaking 
hearts there went up nothing but gratitude to 
God when it pleased him to call that great sin- 
ner from this world, we cannot find it in our 
hearts, we could not shape our lips to ask any 
man to do him honor. No amount of elo- 
quence, no sheen of oflficial position, no loud 
grief of partisan friends, would ever lead us to 
ask monuments or walk in fine processions for 
pirates ; and the sectarian zeal or selfish ambi- 



I50 WENDELL PHILLLPS. 

tion which gives up, deliberately and in full 
knowledge of the facts, three million of human 
beings to hopeless ignorance, daily robbery, 
systematic prostitution, and murder, which the 
law is neither able nor undertakes to prevent or 
avenge, is more monstrous, in our eyes, than 
the love of gold which takes a score of lives 
with merciful quickness on the high seas. 
Haynau on the Danube is no more hateful to 
us than Haynau on the Potomac. Why give 
mobs to one and monuments to the other. 

If these things be necessary to courtesy, I 
cannot claim that we are courteous. We seek 
only to be honest men, and speak the same of 
the dead as of the living. If the grave that 
hides their bodies could swallow also the evil 
they have done and the example they leave, 
we might enjoy at least the luxury of forget- 
ting them. But the evil that men do lives 
after them, and example acquires tenfold au- 
thority when it speaks from the grave. His- 
tory, also, is to be written. How shall a feeble 
minority, without weight or influence in the 
country, with no jury of millions to appeal to, 
— denounced, vilified, and contemned, — how 
shall we make way against the overwhelming 
weight of some colossal reputation, if we do 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 151 

not turn from the idolatrous present, and ap- 
peal to the human race ? saying to your idols 
of to-day : " Here we are defeated ; but we will 
write our judgment with the iron pen of a cen- 
tury to come, and it shall never be forgotten, if 
we can help it, that you were false in your 
generation to the claims of the slave ! " * * * 

We are weak here, — out-talked, out-voted. 
You load our names with infamy, and shout us 
down. But our words bide their time. We 
warn the living that we have terrible memories, 
and their sins are never to be forgotten. We 
will gibbet the name of every apostate so black 
and high that his children's children shall blush 
to bear it. Yet we bear no malice, — cherish 
no resentment. We thank God that the love 
of fame, " that last infirmity of noble minds," 
is shared by the ignoble. In our necessity, we 
seize this weapon in the slave's behalf, and 
teach caution to the living by meting out re- 
lentless justice to the dead. * * * These, 
Mr. Chairman, are the reasons why we take 
care that '' the memory of the wicked shall 
rot." 

I have claimed that the antislavery cause 
has, from the first, been able and dispassion- 
ately argued, every objection candidly examined, 



152 WENDELL PHLLLIPS. 

and every difficulty or doubt anywhere hon- 
estly entertained treated with respect. Let 
me glance at the literature of the cause, and 
try not so much, in a brief hour, to prove this 
assertion, as to point out the sources from 
which any one may satisfy himself of its truth. 

I will begin with certainly the ablest and per- 
haps the most honest statesman who has ever 
touched the slave question. Any one who will 
examine John Quincy Adams' speech on Texas, 
in 1838, will see that he was only seconding the 
full and able exposure of the Texas plot, pre- 
pared by Benjamin Lundy, to one of whose 
pamphlets Dr. Channing, in his " Letter to 
Henry Clay," has confessed his obligation. 
Every one acquainted with those years will al- 
low that the North owes its earliest knowledge 
and first awakening on that subject to Mr, 
Lundy, who made long journeys and devoted 
years to the investigation. His labors have 
this attestation, that they quickened the zeal 
and strengthened the hands of such men as 
Adams and Channing. I have been told that 
Mr. Lundy prepared a brief for Mr. Adams, 
and furnished him the materials for his speech 
on Texas. 

Look next at the right of petition. Long 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 53 

before any member of Congress had opened his 
mouth in its defence, the AboHtion presses and 
lecturers had examined and defended the Hmits 
of this right with profound historical research 
and eminent constitutional ability. So thor- 
oughly had the work been done, that all classes 
of the people had made up their minds about it 
long before any speaker of eminence had 
touched it in Congress. The politicians were 
little aware of this. When Mr. Adams threw 
himself so gallantly into the breach, it is said 
he wrote anxiously home to know whether 
he would be supported in Massachusetts, little 
aware of the outburst of popular gratitude 
which the northern breeze was even then bring- 
ing him, deep and cordial enough to wipe away 
the old grudge Massachusetts had borne him so 
long. Mr. Adams himself was only in favor of 
receiving the petitions, and advised to refuse 
their prayer, which was the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia. He doubted the 
power of Congress to abolish. His doubts 
were examined by Mr. William Goodell, in two 
letters of most acute logic, and of masterly 
ability. If Mr. Adams still retained his doubts, 
it is certain at least that he never expressed 
them afterward. When Mr. Clay paraded the 



154 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

same objections, the whole question of the 
power of Congress over the District was treated 
by Theodore D. Weld in the fullest manner, 
and with the widest research, — indeed, leaving 
nothing to be added : an argument which Dr. 
Channing characterized as " demonstration," 
and pronounced the essay " one of the ablest 
pamphlets from the American press." No 
answer was ever attempted. The best proof of 
its ability is that no one since has presumed to 
doubt the power. Lawyers and statesmen 
have tacitly settled down into its full acknowl- 
edgment. 

The influence of the Colonization Society on 
the welfare of the colored race was the first 
question our movement encountered. To the 
close logic, eloquent appeals, and fully sus- 
tained charges of Mr. Garrison's letters on 
that subject no answer was ever made. Judge 
Jay followed with a work full and able, estab- 
lishing every charge by the most patient in- 
vestigation of facts. It is not too much to say 
of these two volumes, that they left the Coloni- 
zation Society hopeless at the North. It dares 
never show its face before the people, and only 
lingers in some few nooks of sectarian pride, so 
secluded from the influence of present ideas 
as to be almost fossil in their character. 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 55 

The practical working of the slave system, 
the slave laws, the treatment of slaves, their 
food, the duration of their lives, their ignorance 
and moral condition, and the influence of 
Southern public opinion on their fate, have 
been spread out in a detail and with a fulness 
of evidence which no subject has ever received 
before in this country. Witness the words of 
Phelps, Bourne, Rankin, Grimke, the " Anti- 
slavery Record," and, above all, that encyclo- 
paedia of facts and storehouse of arguments, the 
"Thousand Witnesses" of Mr. Theodore D. 
Weld. He also prepared that full and valuable 
tract for the World's Convention called " Slavery 
and the Internal Slave-Trade in the United 
States," published in London in 1841. Unique 
in antislavery literature is Mrs. Child's " Appeal," 
one of the ablest of our weapons, and one of 
the finest efforts of her rare genius. 

The Princeton Review, I believe, first chal- 
lenged the Abolitionists to an investigation of 
the teachings of the Bible on slavery. That 
field had been somewhat broken by our English 
predecessors. But in England the pro-slaver)^' 
party had been soon shamed out of the attempt 
to drag the Bible into their service, and hence 
the discussion there had been short and some- 



156 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

what superficial. The pro-slavery side of the 
question has been eagerly sustained by theo- 
logical reviews and doctors of divinity without 
number, from the half-way and timid faltering 
of Wayland up to the unblushing and melan- 
choly recklessness of Stuart. The argument 
on the other side has come wholly from the 
Abolitionists ; for neither Dr. Hague nor Dr. 
Barnes can be said to have added any thing to 
the wide research, critical acumen, and compre- 
hensive views of Theodore D. Weld, Beriah 
Green, J. G. Fee, and the old work of Duncan. 
On the constitutional questions which have 
at various times arisen, — the citizenship of the 
colored man, the soundness of the " Prigg " de- 
cision, the constitutionality of the old Fugitive 
Slave Law, the true construction of the slave- 
surrender clause, — nothing has been added, 
either in the way of fact or argument, to the 
works of Jay, Weld, Alvan Stewart, E. G. Lor- 
ing, S. E. Sewall, Richard Hildreth, W. I. Bow- 
ditch, the masterly essays of the Emancipator 
at New York and the Liberator at Boston, and 
the various addresses of the Massachusetts and 
American Societies for the last twenty years. 
The idea of the antislavery character of the 
Constitution, — the opiate with which Free Soil 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 57 

quiets its conscience for voting under a pro- 
slavery government, — I heard first suggested by 
Mr. Garrison in 1838. It was elaborately ar- 
gued that year in all our antislavery gatherings, 
both here and in New York, and sustained with 
great ability by Alvan Stewart, and in part by 
T. D. Weld. The antislavery construction of 
the Constitution was ably argued in 1836, in 
the Antislavery Magazine, by Rev. Samuel J. 
May, one of the very first to seek the side of 
Mr. Garrison, and pledge to the slave his life 
and efforts, — a pledge which thirty years of 
devoted labors have redeemed. If it has either 
merit or truth, they are due to no legal learning 
recently added to our ranks, but to some of the 
old and well-known pioneers. This claim has 
since received the fullest investigation from 
Mr, Lysander Spooner, who has urged it with 
all his unrivalled ingenuity, laborious research, 
and close logic. He writes as a lawyer, and 
has no wish, I believe, to be ranked with any 
class of antislavery men. 

The influence of slavery on our Government 
has received the profoundest philosophical in- 
vestigation from the pen of Richard Hildreth, 
in his invaluable essay on " Despotism in 
America," — a work which deserves a place by 



158 WENDELL PHLLLLPS. 

the side of the ablest political disquisitions of 
any age. 

Even the vigorous mind of Rantoul, the 
ablest man, without doubt, of the Democratic 
party, and perhaps the ripest politician in New- 
England, added little or nothing to the store- 
house of antislavery argument. * * * His 
speeches on our question, too short and too 
few, are remarkable for their compact state- 
ment, iron logic, bold denunciation, and the 
wonderful light thrown back upon our history. 
Yet how little do they present which was not 
familiar for years in our antislavery meetings ! 
Look, too, at the last great effort of the idol of 
so many thousands, — Mr. Senator Sumner, — 
the discussion of a great national question, 
of which it has been said that we must go 
back to Webster's reply to Hayne, and Fisher 
Ames on the Jay treaty, to find its equal in Con- 
gress, — praise which we might perhaps qualify, if 
any adequate report were left us of some of the 
noble orations of Adams. No one can be blind 
to the skilful use he has made of his materials, 
the consummate ability with which he has mar- 
shalled them, and the radiant glow which his 
genius has thrown over all. Yet, with the ex- 
ception of his reference to the antislavery de- 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. I 59 

bate in Congress in 181 7, there is hardly a train 
of thought or argument, and no single fact in 
the whole speech, which has not been familiar 
in our meetings and essays for the last ten 
years. * * * 

The relations of the American Church to 
slavery, and the duties of private Christians, 
the whole casuistry of this portion of the 
question, so momentous among descendants of 
the Puritans, — have been discussed with great 
acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. 
Garrison, Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Pillsbury, and 
Foster. They have never attempted to judge 
the American Church by any standard except 
that which she has herself laid down, — never 
claimed that she should be perfect, but have 
contented themselves by demanding that she 
should be consistent. They have never judged 
her except out of her own mouth, and on facts 
asserted by her own presses and leaders. * * * 
In nothing have the Abolitionists shown more 
sagacity or more thorough knowledge of their 
countrymen than in the course they have pur- 
sued in relation to the Church. None but a 
New-Englander can appreciate the power 
which church organizations wield over all who 
share the blood of the Puritans. The influence 



l6o WENDELL PHILLLPS. 

of each sect over its own members is over- 
whelming, often shutting out, or controlling, 
all other influences. We have Popes here, all 
the more dangerous because no triple crown 
puts you on your guard. * * * In such a 
land, the Abolitionists early saw, that, for a 
moral question like theirs, only two paths lay 
open : to work through the Church ; that fail- 
ing, to join battle with it. Some tried long, 
like Luther, to be Protestants, and yet not 
come out of Catholicism ; but their eyes were 
soon opened. Since then we have been con- 
vinced that, to come out from the Church, to 
hold her up as the bulwark of slavery, and to 
make her shortcomings the main burden of our 
appeals to the religious sentiment of the com- 
munity, was our first duty and best policy. 
This course alienated many friends, and was a 
subject of frequent rebuke from such men as 
Dr. Channing. But nothing has ever more 
strengthened the cause, or won it more influ- 
ence ; and it has had the healthiest effect on 
the Church itself. 

Unable to command a wide circulation for 
our books and journals, we have been obliged 
to bring ourselves into close 'contact with the 
people, and to rely mainly on public addresses. 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. l6l 

These have been our most efficient instrumen- 
tality. For proof that these addresses have 
been full of pertinent facts, sound sense, and 
able arguments, we must necessarily point to 
results, and demand to be tried by our fruits. 
Within these last twenty years it has been very 
rare that any fact stated by your lecturers has 
been disproved, or any statement of theirs suc- 
cessfully impeached. And for evidence of the 
soundness, simplicity, and pertinency of their 
arguments we can only claim that our converts 
and co-laborers throughout the land have at 
least the reputation of being specially able " to 
give a reason for the faith that is in them." 

I remember that when, in 1845, the present 
leaders of the Free Soil party, with Daniel 
Webster in their company, met to draw up the 
Anti-Texas Address of the Massachusetts Con- 
vention, they sent to Abolitionists for anti- 
slavery facts and history, for the remarkable 
testimonies of our Revolutionary great men 
which they wished to quote. When, many 
years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts 
wished to send to Congress a resolution affirm 
ing the duty of immediate emancipation, the 
committee sent to William Lloyd Garrison to 
draw it up, and it stands now on our statute- 
book as he drafted it. 



1 62 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

How vigilantly, how patiently, did we watch 
the Texas plot from its commencement ! The 
politic South felt that its first move had been 
too bold, and thenceforward worked under- 
ground. For many a year men laughed at us 
for entertaining any apprehensions. It was 
impossible to rouse the North to its peril. Da- 
vid Lee Child was thought crazy because he 
would not believe there was no danger. His 
elaborate " Letters on Texan Annexation " 
are the ablest and most valuable contribution 
that has been made toward a history of the 
whole plot. Though we foresaw and pro- 
claimed our conviction that annexation would 
be, in the end, a fatal step for the South, we 
did not feel at liberty to relax our opposition, 
well knowing the vast increase of strength it 
would give, at first, to the slave power. I re- 
member being one of a committee which waited 
on Abbott Lawrence, a year or so only before 
annexation, to ask his countenance to some 
general movement, without distinction of party, 
against the Texas scheme. He smiled at our 
fears, begged us to have no apprehensions; 
stating that his correspondence with leading 
men at Washington enabled him to assure us 
annexation was impossible, and that the South 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 163 

itself was determined to defeat the project. A 
short time after, Senators and Representatives 
from Texas took their seats in Congress ! 

Many of these services to the slave were done 
before I joined his cause. In thus referring to 
them, do not suppose me merely seeking occa- 
sion of eulogy on my predecessors and present 
co-laborers. I recall these things only to rebut 
the contemptuous criticism which some about 
us make the excuse for their past neglect of the 
movement, and in answer to " Ion's " repre- 
sentation of our course as reckless fanaticism, 
childish impatience, utter lack of good sense, 
and of our meetings as scenes only of excite- 
ment, of reckless and indiscriminate denuncia- 
tion. I assert that every social, moral, eco- 
nomical, religious, political, and historical aspect 
of the question has been ably and patiently ex- 
amined. And all this has been done with an in- 
dustry and ability which have left little for the 
professional skill, scholarly culture, and histor- 
ical learning of the new laborers to accomplish. 
If the people are still in doubt, it is from the 
inherent difficulty of the subject, or a hatred of 
light, not from want of it. * * * 

Sir, when a nation sets itself to do evil, and 
all its leading forces, wealth, party, and piety. 



164 WENDELL PHILLLPS. 

join in the career, it is impossible but that those 
who offer a constant opposition should be hated 
and maligned, no matter how wise, cautious, 
and well planned their course may be. We are 
peculiar sufferers in this way. The community 
has come to hate its reproving Nathan so bit- 
terly, that even those whom the relenting part 
of it are beginning to regard as standard- 
bearers of the antislavery host think it unwise 
to avow any connection or sympathy with him. 
I refer to some of the leaders of the political 
movement against slavery. They feel it to be 
their mission to marshal and use as effectively 
as possible the present convictions of the 
people. They cannot afford to encumber 
themselves with the odium which twenty years 
of angry agitation have engendered in great 
sects sore from unsparing rebuke, parties galled 
by constant defeat, and leading men provoked 
by unexpected exposure. They are willing to 
confess, privately, that our movement produced 
theirs, and that its continued existence is the 
very breath of their life. But, at the same 
time, they would fain walk on the road without 
being soiled by too close contact with the 
rough pioneers who threw it up. They are 
wise and honorable, and their silence is very ex- 
pressive. 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 6$ 

When I speak of their eminent position and 
acknowledged ability, another thought strikes 
me. Who converted these men and their dis- 
tinguished associates? It is said we have 
shown neither sagacity in plans, nor candor in 
discussion, nor ability. Who, then, or what 
converted Burlingame and Wilson, Sumner and 
Adams, Palfrey and Mann, Chase and Hale, and 
Phillips and Giddings ? Who taught the Chris- 
tian Register, the Daily Advertiser, and that 
class of prints, that there were such things as a 
slave and a slave-holder in the land, and so gave 
them some more intelligent basis than their 
mere instincts to hate William Lloyd Garrison ? 
What magic wand was it whose touch made 
the toadying servility of the land start up the 
real demon that it was, and at the same time 
gathered into the slave's service the professional 
ability, ripe culture, and personal integrity 
which grace the Free Soil ranks? We never 
argue ! These men, then, were converted by 
simple denunciation! They were all converted 
by the " hot," " reckless," " ranting," " bigoted," 
" fanatic " Garrison, who never troubled him- 
self about facts, nor stopped to argue with an 
opponent, but straightway knocked him down ! 
My old and valued friend, Mr. Sumner, often 



1 66 WENDELL PHLLLIPS. 

boasts that he was a reader of the Liberator be- 
fore I was. Do not criticise too much the 
agency by which such men were converted. 
That blade has a double edge. Our reckless 
course, our empty rant, our fanaticism, has 
made Abolitionists of some of the best and 
ablest men in the land. We are inclined to 
go on, and see if, even with such poor tools, we 
cannot make some more. Antislavery zeal and 
the roused conscience of the " godless come- 
outers" made the trembling South demand the 
Fugitive Slave Law, and the Fugitive Slave 
Law " provoked " Mrs. Stoweto the good work 
of "Uncle Tom." That is something! Let 
me say, in passing, that you will nowhere find 
an earlier or more generous appreciation, or 
more flowing eulogy, of these men and their 
labors, than in the columns of the Liberator. 
No one, however feeble, has ever peeped or 
muttered, in any quarter, that the vigilant eye 
of the Pioneer has not recognized him. He 
has stretched out the right hand of a most 
cordial welcome the moment any man's face 
was turned Zionward. 

I do not mention these things to praise Mr. 
Garrison ; I do not stand here for that purpose. 
You will not deny — if you do, I can prove it — 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 6/ 

that the movement of the Abolitionists con- 
verted these men. Their constituents were 
converted by it. The assault upon the right of 
petition, upon the right to print and speak of 
slavery, the denial of the right of Congress over 
the District, the annexation of Texas, the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, were measures which the anti- 
slavery movement provoked, and the discussion 
of which has made all the Abolitionists we have. 
The antislavery cause, then, converted these 
men ; it gave them a constituency ; it gave 
them an opportunity to speak, and it gave 
them a public to listen. The antislavery cause 
gave them their votes, got them their offices, 
furnished them their facts, gave them their 
audience. If you tell me they cherished all 
these principles in their own breasts before Mr.' 
Garrison appeared, I can only say, if the anti- 
slavery movement did not give them their 
ideas, it surely gave the courage to utter them. 
In such circumstances, is it not singular that 
the name of William Lloyd Garrison has never 
been pronounced on the floor of the United 
States Congress linked with any epithet but 
that of contempt ! No one of those men who 
owe their ideas, their station, their audience, to 
him, have ever thought it worth their while to 



1 68 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

utter one word in grateful recognition of the 
power which called them into being. When 
obliged, by the course of their argument, to 
treat the question historically, they can go 
across the water to Clarkson and Wilberforce 
—yes, to a safe salt-water distance. As Daniel 
Webster, when he v/as talking to the farmers of 
Western New York, and wished to contrast slave 
labor and free labor, did not dare to compare 
New York with Virginia — sister States, under 
the same government, planted by the same 
race, worshipping at the same altar, speaking 
the same language — identical in all respects, 
save that one in which he wished to seek the 
contrast ; but no ; he compared it with Cuba — 
the contrast was so close ! Catholic — Protes- 
tant ; Spanish — Saxon; despotism — municipal 
institutions ; readers of Lope de Vega and of 
Shakespeare ; mutterers of the Mass — children 
of the Bible ! But Virginia is too near home ! 
So is Garrison! One would have thought there 
was something in the human breast which 
would sometimes break through policy. These 
noble-hearted men whom I have named must 
surely have found quite irksome the constant 
practice of what Dr. Gardiner used to call " that 
despicable virtue, prudence." One would have 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 69 

thought, when they heard that name spoken 
with contempt, their ready eloquence would 
have leaped from its scabbard to avenge even a 
word that threatened him with insult. But it 
never came — never ! I do not say I blame 
them. Perhaps they thought they should serve 
the cause better by drawing a broad black line 
between themselves and him. Perhaps they 
thought the Devil could be cheated : I do 
not. * * * 

Caution is not always good policy in a cause 
like ours. It is said that, when Napoleon saw 
the day going against him, he used to throw 
away all the rules of war, and trust himself to 
the hot impetuosity of his soldiers. The masses 
are governed more by impulse than conviction ; 
and even were it not so, the convictions of 
most men are on our side, and this will surely 
appear, if we can only pierce the crust of their 
prejudice or indifference. I observe that our 
Free Soil friends never stir their audience so 
deeply as when some individual leaps beyond 
the platform, and strikes upon the very heart of 
the people. Men listen to discussions of laws 
and tactics with ominous patience. It is when 
Mr. Sumner, in Faneuil Hall, avows his deter- 
mination to disobey the Fugitive Slave Law, and 



170 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

cries out : " I was a man before I was a Com- 
missioner," — when Mr. Giddings says of the 
fall of slavery, quoting Adams : " Let it come ; 
if it must come in blood, yet I say let it come ! " 
— that their associates on the platform are sure 
they are wrecking the party, — while many a 
heart beneath beats its first pulse of anti- 
slavery life. 

These are brave words. When I compare 
them with the general tone of Free Soil men in 
Congress, I distrust the atmosphere of Wash- 
ington and of politics. These men move about, 
Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by many a 
cubit. There they lose port and stature. Mr. 
Sumner's speech in the Senate unsays no part 
of his Faneuil Hall pledge. But, though dis- 
cussing the same topic, no one would gather 
from any word or argument that the speaker 
ever took such ground as he did in Faneuil 
Hall. It is all through, the law, the manner of 
the surrender, not the surrender itself, of the 
slave, that he objects to. As my friend Mr. 
Pillsbury so forcibly says, so far as any thing in 
the speech shows, he puts the slave behind the 
jury trial, behind the habeas corpus act, and be- 
hind the new interpretation of the Constitution, 
and says to the slave claimant : " You must get 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 171 

through all these before you reach him ; but, if 
you can get through all these, you may have 
him ! " It was no tone like this which made 
the old Hall rock ! Not if he got through 
twelve jury trials, and forty habeas corpus acts, 
and constitutions built high as yonder monu- 
ment, would he permit so much as the shadow 
of a little finger of the slave claimant to touch 
the slave ! At least so he was understood. 
* * * Mr. Mann, in his speech of February 
15, 1850, says: " The States being separated, I 
would as soon return my own brother or sister 
into bondage, as I would return a fugitive slave. 
Before God, and Christ, and all Christian men, 
they are my brothers and sisters." What a 
condition ! From the lips, too, of a champion 
of the Higher Law ! Whether the States be 
separate or united, neither my brother nor 
any other man's brother shall, with my consent, 
go back to bondage ! So speaks the heart 
— Mr. Mann's version is that of the politi- 
cian. * * * 

This seems to me a very mistaken strain. 
Whenever slavery is banished from our na- 
tional jurisdiction, it will be a momentous gain, 
a vast stride. But let us not mistake the half- 
way house for the end of the journey. I need 



172 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

not say that it matters not to Abolitionists 
under what special law slavery exists. Their 
battle lasts while it exists anywhere, and I 
doubt not Mr. Sumner and Mr. Giddings feel 
themselves enlisted for the whole war. I will 
even suppose, what neither of these gentlemen 
states, that their plan includes not only that 
slavery shall be abolished in the District and 
Territories, but that the slave basis of represen- 
tation shall be struck from the Constitution, 
and the slave-surrender clause construed away. 
But even then does Mr. Giddings or Mr. Sum- 
ner really believe that slavery, existing in its 
full force in the States, " will cease to vex our 
national politics"? Can they point to any 
State where a powerful oligarchy, possessed of 
immense wealth, has ever existed without at- 
tempting to meddle in the government ? Even 
now, does not manufacturing, banking, and 
commercial capital perpetually vex our politics? 
Why should not slave capital exert the same in- 
fluence ? Do they imagine that a hundred thou- 
sand men, possessed of two thousand millions 
of dollars, which they feel the spirit of the age 
is seeking to tear from their grasp, will not 
eagerly catch at all the support they can obtain 
by getting the control of the government ? In 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 73 

a land where the dollar is almighty, " where the 
sin of not being rich is only atoned for by the 
effort to become so," do they doubt that such 
an oligarchy will generally succeed ? Besides, 
banking and manufacturing stocks are not 
urged by despair to seek a controlling influence 
in politics. They know they are about equally 
safe, whichever party rules — that no party 
wishes to legislate their rights away. Slave 
property knows that its being allowed to exist 
depends on its having the virtual control of the 
-government. Its constant presence in politics 
is dictated, therefore, by despair, as well as by 
the wish to secure fresh privileges. Money, 
however, is not the only strength of the slave 
power. That, indeed, were enough, in an age 
when capitalists are our feudal barons. But, 
though driven entirely from national shelter, 
the slave-holders would have the strength of old 
associations, and of peculiar laws in their own 
States, which gives those States wholly into 
their hands. A weaker prestige, fewer privi- 
leges, and less comparative wealth, have ena- 
bled the British aristocracy to rule England for 
two centuries, though the root of their strength 
was cut at Naseby. It takes ages for deeply- 
rooted institutions to die ; and driving slavery 



174 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

into the States will hardly be our Naseby. * * * 
And Mr, Sumner "knows no better aim, un- 
der the Constitution, than to bring back the 
government" to where it was in 1789! Has 
the voyage been so very honest and prosperous 
a one, in his opinion, that his only wish is to 
start again with the same ship, the same crew, 
and the same sailing orders ? Grant all he 
claims as to the state of public opinion, the in- 
tentions of leading men, and the form of our 
institutions at that period ; still, with all these 
checks on wicked men, and helps to good ones, 
here we are, in 1853, according to his own 
showing, ruled by slavery, tainted to the core 
with slavery, and binding the infamous Fugitive 
Slave Law like an honorable frontlet on our 
brows. The more acccurate and truthful his 
glowing picture of the public virtue of 1789, the 
stronger my argument. If even all those great 
patriots, and all that enthusiasm for justice 
and liberty, did not avail to keep us safe in 
such a Union, what will ? In such desperate 
circumstances, can his statesmanship devise no 
better aim than to try the same experiment 
over again, under precisely the same condi- 
tions? What new guaranties does he propose 
to prevent the voyage from being again turned 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 75 

into a piratical slave-trading cruise ? None ! 
Have sixty years taught us nothing? In 1660, 
the English thought, in recalling Charles II., 
that the memory of that scaffold which had 
once darkened the windows of Whitehall would 
be guaranty enough for his good behavior. 
But, spite of the spectre, Charles II. repeated 
Charles I., and James outdid him. Wiser by 
this experience, when the nation in 1689 got 
another chance, they trusted to no guaranties, 
but so arranged the very elements of their 
government that William III. could not repeat 
Charles I. Let us profit by the lesson. * * * 
If all I have said to you is untrue, if I have 
exaggerated, explain to me this fact. In 1831, 
Mr. Garrison commenced a paper advocating 
the doctrine of immediate emancipation. He 
had against him the thirty thousand churches 
and all the clergy of the country, — its wealth, 
its commerce, its press. In 1831, what was the 
state of things? There was the most entire 
ignorance and apathy on the slave question. 
If men knew of the existence of slavery, it was 
only as a part of picturesque Virginia life. No 
one preached, no one talked, no one wrote 
about it. No whisper of it stirred the surface 
of the political sea. The Church heard of it 



176 WENDELL PHLLLIPS. 

occasionally, when some colonization agent 
asked funds to send the blacks to Africa. Old 
school-books tainted with some antislavery 
selections had passed out of use, and new ones 
were compiled to suit the times. Soon as any 
dissent from the prevailing faith appeared, 
eveiy one set himself to crush it. The pulpits 
preached at it ; the press denounced it ; mobs 
tore down houses, threw presses into the fire 
and the stream, and shot the editors ; religious 
conventions tried to smother it ; parties arrayed 
themselves against it. Daniel Webster boasted 
in the Senate, that he had never introduced the 
subject of slavery to that body, and never would. 
Mr. Clay, in 1839, iriakes a speech for the Presi- 
dency, in which he says, that to discuss the sub- 
ject of slavery is moral treason, and that no 
man has a right to introduce the subject into 
Congress. Mr. Benton, in 1844, laid down his 
platform, and he not only denies the right, but 
asserts that he never has and never will discuss 
the subject. Yet Mr. Clay, from 1839 down to 
his death, hardly made a remarkable speech of 
any kind, except on slavery. Mr. Webster, 
having indulged now and then in a little easy 
rhetoric, as at Niblo's and elsewhere, opens his 
mouth in 1840, generously contributing his aid 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. I// 

to both sides, and stops talking about it only 
when death closes his lips. Mr. Benton's six 
or eight speeches in the Unired States Senate 
have all been on the subject of slavery in the 
Southwestern section of the country, and form 
the basis of whatever claim he has to the char- 
acter of a statesman, and he owes his seat in 
the next Congress somewhat, perhaps, to anti- 
slavery pretensions ! The Whig and Demo- 
cratic parties pledged themselves just as 
emphatically against the antislavery discussion, 
— against agitation and free speech. These 
men said : " It sha'n't be talked about ; it 
won't be talked about ! " These are your 
statesmen ! — men who understand the present 
that is, and mould the future ! The man 
who understands his own time, and whose 
genius moulds the future to his views, he is a 
statesman, is he not ? These men devoted 
themselves to banks, to the tariff, to internal 
improvements, to constitutional and financial 
questions. They said to slavery : " Back ! no 
entrance here ! We pledge ourselves against 
you." And then there came up a little printer- 
boy, who whipped them into the traces, and 
made them talk, like Hotspur's starling, nothing 
BUT slavery. He scattered all these gigantic 



1/8 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

shadows, — tariff, bank, constitutional questions, 
financial questions ; and slavery, like the colos- 
sal head in Walpole's romance, came up and 
filled the whole political horizon ! Yet you 
must remember he is not a statesman ; he 
is a " fanatic." He has no discipline, — Mr. 
" Ion " says so ; he does not understand the 
"discipline that is essential to victory" ! This 
man did not understand his own time, he did 
not know what the future was to be, — he was 
not able to shape it — he had no " prudence," — 
he had no " foresight " ! Daniel Webster says, 
" I have never introduced this subject, and 
never will," — and dies broken-hearted because 
he had not been able to talk enough about it ! 
Benton says, " I will never speak of slavery," — 
and lives to break with his party on this issue! 
Clay says it is " moral treason " to introduce 
the subject into Congress — and lives to see 
Congress turned into an antislavery debating 
society, to suit the purpose of one " too power- 
ful individual." * * * Remember who it 
was that said in 1831 : "I am in earnest — 
I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I 
will not retreat a single inch — and I will be 
heard!'' That speaker has lived twenty-two 
years^ and the complaint of twenty-three rnil- 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. 1 79 

lions of people is, " Shall we never hear of any 
thing but slavery ? " * * * Well, it is all 
HIS fault [pointing to Mr. Garrison]. * * * 
It seems to me that such men may point to the 
present aspect of the nation, to their originally 
avowed purpose, to the pledges and efforts of 
all your great men against them, and then let 
you determine to which side the credit of sa- 
gacity and statesmanship belongs. * * * 

It may sound strange to some, this claim 
for Mr. Garrison of a profound statesmanship. 
Men have heard him styled a mere fanatic so 
long that they are incompetent to judge him 
fairly. " The phrases men are accustomed " 
says Goethe, " to repeat incessantly end by be- 
coming convictions, and ossify the organs of 
intelligence." I cannot accept you, therefore, 
as my jury. I appeal from Festus to Csesar, 
from the prejudice of our streets to the com- 
mon-sense of the world, and to your children. 

Every thoughtful and unprejudiced mind 
must see that such an evil as slavery will 
yield only to the most radical treatment. If 
you consider the work we have to do, you will 
not think us needlessly aggressive, or that we 
dig down unnecessarily deep in laying the 
foundations of our enterprise. A money power 



l8o WENDELL PHLLLIPS. 

of two thousand millions of dollars, as the 
prices of slaves now range, held by a small 
body of able and desperate men ; that body 
raised into a political aristocracy by special 
constitutional provisions ; cotton, the product 
of slave labor, forming the basis of our whole 
foreign commerce, and the commercial class 
thus subsidized ; the press bought up, the pul- 
pit reduced to vassalage, the heart of the com- 
mon people chilled by a bitter prejudice against 
the black race ; our leading men bribed, by 
ambition, either to silence or open hostility; — 
in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist 
rely ? On a few cold prayers, mere lip-service, 
and never from the heart ? On a church res- 
olution, hidden often in its records, and meant 
only as a decent cover for servility in daily 
practice? On political parties, with their super- 
ficial influence at best, and seeking ordinarily 
only to use existing prejudices to the best 
advantage ? Slavery has deeper root here than 
any aristocratic institution has in Europe ; and 
politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which 
revolution is the fever-spasm. Yet we have 
seen European aristocracy survive storms which 
seemed to reach down to the primal strata of 
European life. Shall we, then, trust to mere 



THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT. l8l 

politics, where even revolution has failed ? 
How shall the stream rise above its fountain ? 
Where shall our church organizations or parties 
get strength to attack their great parent and 
moulder, the slave power ? Shall the thing 
formed say to him that formed it, Why hast 
thou made me thus ? The old jest of one who 
tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but a 
tame picture of the man who imagines that, 
by working solely through existing sects and 
parties, he can destroy slavery. Mechanics say 
nothing but an earthquake strong enough to 
move all Egypt can bring down the pyramids. 

Experience has confirmed these views. The 
Abolitionists who have acted on them have a 
"short method" with all unbelievers. They 
have but to point to their own success, in con- 
trast with every other man's failure. To waken 
the nation to its real state, and chain it to the 
consideration of this one duty, is half the work. 
So much we have done. Slavery has been 
made the question of this generation. To 
startle the South to madness, so that every 
step she takes, in her blindness, is one step 
more toward ruin, is much. This we have 
done. Witness Texas and the Fugitive Slave 
Law. To have elaborated for the nation the 



1 82 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

only plan of redemption, pointed out the only 
exodus from this "sea of troubles," is much. 
This we claim to have done in our motto of 
Immediate, Unconditional Emancipation 
ON THE Soil. The closer any statesmanlike 
mind looks into the question, the more favor 
our plan finds with it. The Christian asks 
fairly of the infidel, " If this religion be not 
from God, how do you explain its triumph, and 
the history of the first three centuries?" Our 
question is similar. If our agitation has not 
been wisely planned and conducted, explain for 
us the history of the last twenty years ! Expe- 
rience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a 
rash man who expects success in future from 
the same means which have secured it in times 
past. 



SALMON PORTLAND CHASE, 

OF OHIO. 

(born 1808, DIED 1873.) 



ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL ; SENATE, FEBRU- 
ARY 3, 1854. 

The bill for the organization of the Terri- 
tories of Nebraska and Kansas being under con- 
sideration — 

Mr. Chase submitted the following amend- 
ment : 

Strike out from section 14 the words " was 
superseded by the principles of the legisla- 
tion of 1850, commonly called the compromise 
measures, and " ; so that the clause will read : 

"That the Constitution, and all laws of the 
United States which are not locally inapplica- 
ble, shall have the same force and effect within 
the said Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere 
within the United States, except the eighth 
section of the act preparatory to the admission 
of Missouri into the Union, approved March 
6, 1820, which is hereby declared inoperative," 

Mr. Chase said : 

183 



1 84 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

Mr. President, I had occasion, a few days ago 
to expose the utter groundlessness of the per- 
sonal charges made by the Senator from Illinois 
(Mr. Douglas) against myself and the other sign- 
ers of the Independent Democratic Appeal. I 
now move to strike from this bill a statement 
which I will to-day demonstrate to be without any 
foundation in fact or history. I intend after- 
ward to move to strike out the whole clause an- 
nulling the Missouri prohibition. 

I enter into this debate, Mr. President, in no 
spirit of personal unkindness. The issue is too 
grave and too momentous for the indulgence of 
such feelings. I see the great question before 
me, and that question only. 

Sir, these crowded galleries, these thronged 
lobbies, this full attendance of the Senate, prove 
the deep, transcendent interest of the theme. 

A few days only have elapsed since the Con- 
gress of the United States assembled in this 
Capitol. Then no agitation seemed to disturb 
the political elements. Two of the great politi- 
cal parties of the country, in their national con- 
ventions, had announced that slavery agitation 
was at an end, and that henceforth that subject 
was not to be discussed in Congress or out of 
Congress. The President, in his annual mes- 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 1 85 

sage, had referred to this state of opinion, and 
had declared his fixed purpose to maintain, as 
far as any responsibihty attached to him, the 
quiet of the country. Let me read a brief ex- 
tract from that message : 

" It is no part of my purpose to give promi- 
nence to any subject which may properly be 
regarded as set at rest by the deliberate judg- 
ment of the people. But while the present is 
bright with promise, and the future full of 
demand and inducement for the exercise of 
active intelligence, the past can never be with- 
out useful lessons of admonition and instruc- 
tion. If its dangers serve not as beacons, they 
will evidently fail to fulfil the object of a wise 
design. When the grave shall have closed over 
all those who are now endeavoring to meet the 
obligations of duty, the year 1850 will be re- 
curred to as a period filled with anxious appre- 
hension. A successful war had just terminated. 
Peace brought with it a vast augmentation of 
territory. Disturbing questions arose, bearing 
upon the domestic institutions of one portion of 
the Confederacy, and involving the constitu- 
tional rights of the States. But, notwitstanding 
dififerences of opinion and sentiment, which then 
existed in relation to details and specific pro- 



lS6 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

• 
visions, the acquiescence of distinguished citi- 
zens, whose devotion to the Union can never 
be doubted, had given renewed vigor to our in- 
stitutions, and restored a sense of repose and 
security to the pubHc mind throughout the 
Confederacy. That this repose is to suffer no 
shock during my official term, if I have power 
to avert it, those who placed me here may be 
assured." 

The agreement of the two old political par- 
ties, thus referred to by the Chief Magistrate of 
the country, was complete, and a large majority 
of the American people seemed to acquiesce in 
the legislation of which he spoke. 

A few of us, indeed, doubted the accuracy of 
these statements, and the permanency of this 
repose. We never believed that the acts of 
1850 would prove to be a permanent adjust- 
ment of the slavery question. We believed no 
permanent adjustment of that question possible 
except by a return to that original policy of the 
fathers of the Republic, by which slavery was 
restricted within State limits, and freedom, 
without exception or limitation, was intended 
to be secured to every person outside of State 
limits and under the exclusive jurisdiction of 
the General Government. 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 1 8/ 

But, sir, we only represented a small, though 
vigorous and growing, party in the country. 
Our number was small in Congress. By some 
we were regarded as visionaries — by some as 
factionists ; while almost all agreed in pro- 
nouncing us mistaken. 

And so, sir, the country was at peace. As 
the eye swept the entire circumference of the 
horizon and upward to mid-heaven not a cloud 
appeared ; to common observation there was 
no mist or stain upon the clearness of the sky. 

But suddenly all is changed. Rattling thun- 
der breaks from the cloudless firmament. The 
storm bursts forth in fury. Warring winds rush 
into conflict. 

" Eunis, Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis 
Africus." 

Yes, sir, " creber procellis Africus'' — the 
South wind thick with storm. And now we find 
ourselves in the midst of an agitation, the end 
and issue of which no man can foresee. 

Now, sir, who is responsible for this renewal 
of strife and controversy? Not we, for we 
have introduced no question of territorial 
slavery into Congress — not we who are de- 
nounced as agitators and factionists. No, sir: 



1 88 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

the quietists and the finalists have become 
agitators ; they who told us that all agitation 
was quieted, and that the resolutions of the po- 
litical conventions put a final period to the dis- 
cussion of slavery. 

This will not escape the observation of the 
country. It is Slavery that renews the strife. 
It is Slavery that again wants room. It is 
Slavery, with its insatiate demands for more 
slave territory and more slave States. 

And what does Slavery ask for now ? Why, 
sir, it demands that a time-honored and sacred 
compact shall be rescinded — a compact which 
has endured through a whole generation — a 
compact which has been universally regarded 
as inviolable, North and South — a compact, the 
constitutionality of which few have doubted, 
and by which all have consented to abide. 

It will not answer to violate such a compact 
without a pretext. Some plausible ground 
must be discovered or invented for such an act ; 
and such a ground is supposed to be found in 
the doctrine which was advanced the other day 
by the Senator from Illinois, that the com- 
promise acts of 1850 "superseded " the prohi- 
bition of slavery north of 36° 30', in the act pre- 
paratory for the admission of Missouri. Ay, 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 1 89 

sir, " superseded " is the phrase — " superseded 
by the principles of the legislation of 1850, 
commonly called the compromise measures." 

It is against this statement, untrue in fact, 
and without foundation in history, that the 
amendment which I have proposed is directed. 

Sir, this is a novel idea. At the time when 
these measures were before Congress in 1850, 
when the questions involved in them were dis- 
cussed from day to day, from week to week, 
and from month to month, in this Senate cham- 
ber, who ever heard that the Missouri prohibi- 
tion was to be superseded ? What man, at 
what time, in what speech, ever suggested the 
idea that the acts of that year were to affect 
the Missouri compromise ? The Senator from 
Illinois the other day invoked the authority of 
Henry Clay — that departed statesman, in re- 
spect to whom, whatever may be the differ- 
ences of political opinion, none question that, 
among the great men of this country, he stood 
proudly eminent. Did he, in the report made 
by him as the chairman of the Committee of 
Thirteen, or in any speech in support of the 
compromise acts, or in any conversation in the 
committee, or out of the committee, ever even 
hint at this doctrine of supersedure ? Did any 



1 90 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

supporter or any opponent of the compromise 
acts ever vindicate or condemn tliem on the 
ground that the Missouri prohibition would be 
affected by them ? Well, sir, the compromise 
acts were passed. They were denounced North, 
and they were denounced South. Did any de- 
fender of them at the South ever justify his 
support of them upon the ground that the 
South had obtained through them the repeal of 
the Missouri prohibition ? Did any objector to 
them at the North ever even suggest as a ground 
of condemnation that that prohibition was 
swept away by them ? No, sir ! No man, 
North or South, during the whole of the discus- 
sion of those acts here, or in that other discus- 
sion which followed their enactment throughout 
the country, ever intimated any such opinion. 
Now, sir, let us come to the last session of 
Congress. A Nebraska bill passed the House 
and came to the Senate, and was reported from 
the Committee on Territories by the Senator 
from Illinois, as its chairman. Was there any 
provision in it which even squinted toward this 
notion of repeal by supersedure ? Why, sir, 
Southern gentlemen opposed it on the very 
ground that it left the Territory under the op- 
eration of the Missouri prohibition. The Sen- 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 19I 

ator from Illinois made a speech in defence of it. 
Did he invoke Southern support upon the 
ground that it superseded the Missouri prohibi- 
tion ? Not at all. Was it opposed or vindi- 
cated by anybody on any such ground ? Every 
Senator knows the contrary. The Senator from 
Missouri (Mr. Atchison), now the President of 
this body, made a speech upon the bill, in which 
he distinctly declared that the Missouri prohi- 
bition was not repealed, and could not be re- 
pealed. 

I will send this speech to the Secretary, and 
ask him to read the paragraphs marked. 

The Secretary read as follows : 

" I will now state to the Senate the views 
which induced me to oppose this proposition in 
the early part of this session. 

" I had two objections to it. One was that 
the Indian title in that Territory had not been 
extinguished, or, at least, a very small portion 
of it had been. Another was the Missouri 
compromise, or, as it is commonly called, the 
slavery restriction. It was my opinion at that 
time — and I am not now very clear on that 
subject — that the law of Congress, when the 
State of Missouri was admitted into the Union, 
excluding slavery from the Territory of Louisi- 
ana north of 36° 30', would be enforced in that 
Territory unless it was specially rescinded, and 



192 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

whether that law was in accordance with the 
Constitution of the United States or not, it 
would do its work, and that work would be to 
preclude slave-holders from going into that Ter- 
ritory. But when I came to look into that 
question, I found that there was no prospect, 
no hope, of a repeal of the Missouri compro- 
mise excluding slavery from that Territory. 
Now, sir, I am free to admit, that at this mo- 
ment, at this hour, and for all time to come, I 
should oppose the organization or the settle- 
ment of that Territory unless my constituents, 
and the constituents of the whole South — of 
the slave States of the Union, — could go into it 
upon the same footing, with equal rights and 
equal privileges, carrying that species of prop- 
erty with them as other people of this Union. 
Yes, sir, I acknowledge that that would have 
governed me, but I have no hope that the 
restriction will ever be repealed. 

" I have always been of opinion that the first 
great error committed in the political history 
of this country was the ordinance of 1787, ren- 
dering the Northwest Territory free territory. 
The next great error was the Missouri compro- 
mise. But they are both irremediable. There is 
no remedy for them. We must submit to 
them. I am prepared to do it. It is evident 
that the Missouri compromise cannot be re- 
pealed. So far as that question is concerned, 
we might as well agree to the admission of this 
Territory now as next year, or five or ten years 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 1 93 

hence." — Congressional Globe, Second Session, 
32d Cong., vol. xxvi., page 11 13. 

That, sir, is the speech of the Senator from 
Missouri (Mr, Atchison), whose authority, I 
think, must go for something upon this ques- 
tion. What does he say ? " When I came to 
look into that question " — of the possible repeal 
of the Missouri prohibition — that was the ques- 
tion he was looking into — " I found that there 
was no prospect, no hope, of a repeal of the 
Missouri compromise excluding slavery from 
that Territory-." And yet, sir, at that very 
moment, according to this new doctrine of the 
Senator from Illinois, it had been repealed three 
years ! 

Well, the Senator from Missouri said further, 
that if he thought it possible to oppose this re- 
striction successfully, he never would consent 
to the organization of the territory until it was 
rescinded. But, said he, " I acknowledge that 
I have no hope that the restriction will ever be 
repealed." Then he made some complaint, as 
other Southern gentlemen have frequently 
done, of the ordinance of 1787, and the Mis- 
souri prohibition ; but went on to say : " They 
are both irremediable ; there is no remedy for 
them ; we must submit to them ; I am prepared 



194 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

to do it ; it is evident that the Missouri com- 
promise cannot be repealed." 

Now, sir, when was this said ? It was on the 
morning of the 4th of March, just before the 
close of the last session, when that Nebraska 
bill, reported by the Senator from Illinois, which 
proposed no repeal, and suggested no superse- 
dure, was under discussion. I think, sir, that 
all this shows pretty clearly that up to the very 
close of the last session of Congress nobody 
had ever thought of a repeal by supersedure. 
Then what took place at the commencement of 
the present session ? The Senator from Iowa, 
early in December, introduced a bill for the or- 
ganization of the Territory of Nebraska. I be- 
lieve it was the same bill which was under dis- 
cussion here at the last session, line for line, 
word for word. If I am wrong, the Senator 
will correct me. 

Did the Senator from Iowa, then, entertain 
the idea that the Missouri prohibition had been 
superseded? No, sir, neither he nor any other 
man here, so far as could be judged from any 
discussion, or statement, or remark, had received 
this notion. 

Well, on the 4th day of Januar>% the Committee 
on Territories, through their chairman, the 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 1 95 

Senator from Illinois, made a report on tlie terri- 
torial organization of Nebraska ; and that report 
was accompanied by a bill. Now, sir, on that 
4th day of January, just thirty days ago, did 
the Committee on Territories entertain the 
opinion that the compromise acts of 1850 
superseded the Missouri prohibition ? If they 
did, they were very careful to keep it to them- 
selves. We will judge the committee by their 
own report. What do they say in that ? In 
the first place they describe the character of the 
controversy, in respect to the Territories ac- 
quired from Mexico. They say that some be- 
lieved that a Mexican law prohibiting slavery 
was in force there, while others claimed that 
the Mexican law became inoperative at the 
moment of acquisition, and that slave-holders 
could take their slaves into the Territory and 
hold them there under the provisions of the 
Constitution. The Territorial Compromise 
acts, as the committee tell us, steered clear of 
these questions. They simply provided that 
the States organized out of these Territories 
might come in with or without slavery, as they 
should elect, but did not affect the question 
whether slaves could or could not be intro- 
duced before the organization of State govern- 



196 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

ments. That question was left entirely to ju- 
dicial decision. 

Well, sir, what did the committee propose to 
do with the Nebraska Territory? In respect 
to that, as in respect to the Mexican Territory, 
differences of opinion exist in relation to the 
introduction of slaves. There are Southern 
gentlemen who contend that notwithstanding 
the Missouri prohibition, they can take their 
slaves into the territory covered by it, and 
hold them there by virtue of the Constitution. 
On the other hand the great majority of the 
American people. North and South, believe the 
Missouri prohibition to be constitutional and 
effectual. Now, what did the committee pro- 
pose ? Did they propose to repeal the prohibi- 
tion ? Did they suggest that it had been super- 
seded ? Did they advance any idea of that 
kind ? No, sir. This is their language : 

" Under this section, as in the case of the 
Mexican law in New Mexico and Utah, it is a 
disputed point whether slavery is prohibited in 
the Nebraska country by valid enactment. 
The decision of this question involves the 
constitutional power of Congress to pass laws 
prescribing and regulating the domestic institu- 
tions of the various Territories of the Union. 
In the opinion of those eminent statesmen who 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 1 97 

hold that Congress is invested with no rightful 
authority to legislate upon the subject of 
slavery in the Territories, the eighth section of 
the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri 
is null and void, while the prevailing sentiment 
in a large portion of the Union sustains the 
doctrine that the Constitution of the United 
States secures to every citizen an inalienable 
right to move into any of the Territories with 
his property, of whatever kind and description, 
and to hold and enjoy the same under the 
sanction of law. Your committee do not 
feel themselves called upon to enter into the 
discussion of these controverted questions. 
They involve the same grave issues which pro- 
duced the agitation, the sectional strife, and 
the fearful struggle of 1850." 

This language will bear repetition : 
"Your committee do not feei themselves 
called upon to enter into the discussion of these 
controverted questions. They involve the same 
grave issues which produced the agitation, the 
sectional strife, and the fearful struggle of 
1850." 

And they go on to say : 

" Congress deemed it wise and prudent to re- 
frain from deciding the matters in controversy 
then, either by affirming or repealing the Mexi- 
can laws, or by an act declaratory of the true 
intent of the Constitution and the extent of the 
protection afforded by it to slave property in 



198 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

the Territories ; so your committee are not pre- 
pared now to recommend a departure from the 
course pursued on that memorable occasion, 
either by affirming or repealing the eighth sec- 
tion of the Missouri act, or by any act declara- 
tory of the meaning of the Constitution in 
respect to the legal points in dispute." 

Mr. President, here are very remarkable facts. 
The Committee on Territories declared that it 
was not wise, that it was not prudent, that it 
was not right, to renew the old controversy, 
and to arouse agitation. They declared that 
they would abstain from any recommendation 
of a repeal of the prohibition, or of any provision 
declaratory of the construction of the Constitu- 
tion in respect to the legal points in dispute. 

Mr. Fiesident, I am not one of those who 
suppose that the question between Mexican 
law and the slave-holding claims was avoided in 
the Utah and New Mexico Act ; nor do I 
think that the introduction into the Nebraska 
bill of the provisions of those acts in respect 
to slavery would leave the question between 
the Missouri prohibition and the same slave- 
holding claims entirely unaffected. I am of a 
very different opinion. But I am dealing now 
with the report of the Senator from Illinois, as 
chairman of the committee, and I show, be- 



THE KANSA S-NEBRA SKA BILL. 1 99 

yond all controversy, that that report gave no 
countenance whatever to the doctrine of re- 
peal by supersedure. 

Well, sir, the bill reported by the committee 
was printed in the Washington Sentinel on Sat- 
urday, January 7th. It contained twenty sec- 
tions ; no more, no less. It contained no pro- 
visions in respect to slavery, except those in 
the Utah and New Mexico bills. It left those 
provisions to speak for themselves. This was 
in harmony Avith the report of the committee. 
On the loth of January — on Tuesday — the act 
appeared again in the Sentinel ; but it had 
grown longer during the interval. It appeared 
now with twenty-one sections. There was a 
statement in the paper that the twenty-first 
section had been omitted by a clerical error. 

But, sir, it is a singular fact that this twenty- 
first section is entirely out of harmony with the 
committee's report. It undertakes to determine 
the effect of the provision in the Utah and New 
Mexico bills. It declares, among other things, 
that all questions pertaining to slavery in the 
Territories, and in the new States to be formed 
therefrom, are to be left to the decision of the 
people residing therein, through their appropri- 
ate representatives. This provision, in effect, 



200 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

repealed the Missouri prohibition, which the 
committee, in their report, declared ought not to 
be done. Is it possible, sir, that this was a mere 
clerical error? May it not be that this twenty- 
first section was the fruit of some Sundaywork, 
between Saturday the 7th, and Tuesday the 
lOth? 

But, sir, the addition of this section, it seems, 
did not help the bill. It did not, I suppose, 
meet the approbation of Southern gentlemen, 
who contended that they have a right to take 
their slaves into the Territories, notwithstand- 
ing any prohibition, either by Congress or by a 
Territorial Legislature. I dare say it was 
found that the votes of these gentlemen could 
not be had for the bill with that clause in it. 
It was not enough that the committee had 
abandoned their report, and added this twenty- 
first section, in direct contravention of its 
reasonings and principles. The twenty-first 
section itself must be abandoned, and the re- 
peal of the Missouri prohibition placed in a 
shape which would not deny the slave-holding 
claim. 

The Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Dixon), on 
the i6th of January, submitted an amendment 
which came square up to repeal, and to the 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 20I 

claim. That amendment, probably, produced 
some fluttering and some consultation. It met 
the views of Southern Senators, and probably 
determined the shape which the bill has finally 
assumed. Of the various mutations which it 
has undergone, I can hardly be mistaken in at- 
tributing the last to the amendment of the 
Senator from Kentucky. That there is no 
effect without a cause, is among our earliest 
lessons in physical philosophy, and I know of 
no causes which will account for the remarka- 
ble changes which the bill underwent after 
the i6th of January, other than that amend- 
ment, and the determination of Southern Sena- 
tors to support it, and to vote against any 
provision recognizing the right of any Terri- 
torial Legislature to prohibit the introduction 
of slavery. 

It was just seven days, Mr. President, after 
the Senator from Kentucky had offered his 
amendment, that a fresh amendment was re- 
ported from the Committee on Territories, in 
the shape of a new bill, enlarged to forty sec- 
tions. This new bill cuts off from the pro- 
posed Territory half a degree of latitude on 
the south, and divides the residue into two 
Territories — the southern Territory of Kansas, 



202 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

and the northern Territory of Nebraska. It 
applies to each all the provisions of the Utah 
and New Mexico bills ; it rejects entirely the 
twenty-first clerical-error section, and abrogates 
the Missouri prohibition by the very singular 
provision, which I will read : 

" The Constitution and all laws of the United 
States which are not locally inapplicable shall 
have the same force and effect within the said 
Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the 
United States, except the eighth section of the 
act preparatory to the admission of Missouri 
into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which 
was superseded by the principles of the legisla- 
tion of 1850, commonly called the compromise 
measures, and is therefore declared inopera- 
tive." 

Doubtless, Mr. President, this provision oper- 
ates as a repeal of the prohibition. The Sena- 
tor from Kentucky was right when he said it 
was in effect the equivalent of his amendment. 
Those who are willing to break up and destroy 
the old compact of 1820 can vote for this bill 
with full assurance that such will be its effect. 
But I appeal to them not to vote for this super- 
sedure clause. I ask them not to incorporate 
into the legislation of the country a declaration 
which every one knows to be wholly untrue. 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 203 

I have said that this doctrine of supersedure 
is new. I have now proved that it is a plant 
of but ten days' growth. It was never seen 
or heard of until the 23d day of January, 
1854. It was upon that day that this tree of 
Upas was planted ; we already see its poison 
fruits, ■s^ * * 

The truth is, that the compromise acts of 
1850 were not intended to introduce any prin- 
ciples of territorial organization applicable to 
any other Territory except that covered by 
them. The professed object of the friends of 
the compromise acts was to compose the whole 
slavery agitation. There were various matters 
of complaint. The non-surrender of fugitives 
from service was one. The existence of slavery 
and the slave-trade here in this District and 
elsewhere, under the exclusive jurisdiction of 
Congress, was another. The apprehended in- 
troduction of slavery into the Territories fur- 
nished other grounds of controversy. The 
slave States complained of the free States, and 
the free States complained of the slave States. 
It was supposed by some that this whole agita- 
tion might be stayed, and finally put at rest by 
skilfully adjusted legislation. So, sir, we had 
the omnibus bill, and its appendages the fugi- 



204 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

tive-slave bill and the District slave-trade sup- 
pression bill. To please the North — to please 
the free States — California was to be admitted, 
and the slave depots here in the District were 
to be broken up. To please the slave States, a 
stringent fugitive-slave act was to be passed, 
and slavery was to have a chance to get into 
the new Territories. The support of the Sena- 
tors and Representatives from Texas was to be 
gained by a liberal adjustment of boundary, 
and by the assumption of a large portion of 
their State debt. The general result contem- 
plated was a complete and final adjustment of 
all questions relating to slavery. The acts 
passed. A number of the friends of the acts 
signed a compact pledging themselves to sup- 
port no man for any office who would in any 
way renew the agitation. The country was re- 
quired to acquiesce in the settlement as an ab- 
solute finality. No man concerned in carrying 
those measures through Congress, and least of 
all the distinguished man whose efforts mainly 
contributed to their success, ever imagined that 
in the Territorial acts, which formed a part of 
the series, they were planting the germs of a 
new agitation. Indeed, I have proved that one 
of these acts contained an express stipulation 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 20$ 

which precludes the revival of the agitation in 
the form in which it is now thrust upon the 
country, without manifest disregard of the pro- 
visions of those acts themselves. 

I have thus proved beyond controversy that 
the averment of the bill, which my amendment 
proposes to strike out, is untrue. Senators, 
will you unite in a statement which you know 
to be contradicted by the history of the coun- 
try ? Will you incorporate into a public statute 
an affirmation which is contradicted by every 
event which attended or followed the adoption 
of the compromise acts ? Will you here, acting 
under your high responsibility as Senators of 
the States, assert as a fact, by a solemn vote, 
that which the personal recollection of every 
Senator who was here during the discussion of 
those compromise acts disproves ? I will not 
believe it until I see it. If you wish to break 
up the time-honored compact embodied in the 
Missouri compromise, transferred into the joint 
resolution for the annexation of Texas, pre- 
served and affirmed by these compromise acts 
themselves, do it openly — do it boldly. Repeal 
the Missouri prohibition. Repeal it by a direct 
vote. Do not repeal it by indirection. Do not 
" declare " it " inoperative," " because super- 



206 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

seded by the principles of the legislation of 
1850." 

Mr. President, three great eras have marked 
the history of this country in respect to slavery. 
The first may be characterized as the Era of 
Enfranchisement. It commenced with the 
earUest struggles for national independence. 
The spirit which inspired it animated the hearts 
and prompted the efforts of Washington, of 
Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Wythe, of 
Adams, of Jay, of Hamilton, of Morris — in short, 
of all the great men of our early history. All 
these hoped for, all these labored for, all these 
believed in, the final deliverance of the country 
from the curse of slavery. That spirit burned 
in the Declaration of Independence, and in- 
spired the provisions of the Constitution, and 
the Ordinance of 1787. Under its influence, 
when in full vigor, State after State provided 
for the emancipation of the slaves within their 
limits, prior to the adoption of the Constitution. 
Under its feebler influence at a later period, 
and during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, 
the importation of slaves was prohibited into 
Mississippi and Louisiana, in the faint hope 
that those Territories might finally become free 
States. Gradually that spirit ceased to influence 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 20/ 

our public councils, and lost its control over the 
American heart and the American policy. 
Another era succeeded, but by such imper- 
ceptible gradations that the lines which separate 
the two cannot be traced with absolute preci- 
sion. The facts of the two eras meet and mingle 
as the currents of confluent streams mix so im- 
perceptibly that the observer cannot fix the 
spot where the meeting waters blend. 

This second era was the Era of CONSERVA- 
TISM. Its great maxim was to preserve the ex- 
isting condition. Men said : Let things remain 
as they are ; let slavery stand where it is ; ex- 
clude it where it is not ; refrain from disturbing 
the public quiet by agitation ; adjust all diffi- 
culties that arise, not by the application of 
principles, but by compromises. 

It was during this period that the Senator 
tells us that slavery was maintained in Illinois, 
both while a Territory and after it became a 
State, in despite of the provisions of the ordi- 
nance. It is true, sir, that the slaves held in the 
Illinois country, under the French law, were not 
regarded as absolutely emancipated by the pro- 
visions of the ordinance. But full effect was given 
to the ordinance in excluding the introduction 
of slaves, and thus the Territory was preserved 



208 SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

from eventually becoming a slave State. The 
few slave-holders in the Territory of Indiana, 
which then included Illinois, succeeded in ob- 
taining such an ascendency in its affairs, that 
repeated applications were made not merely by 
conventions of delegates, but by the Territorial 
Legislature itself, for a suspension of the clause 
in the ordinance prohibiting slavery. These 
applications were reported upon by John Ran- 
dolph, of Virginia, in the House, and by Mr. 
Franklin in the Senate. Both the reports were 
against suspension. The grounds stated by 
Randolph are specially worthy of being con- 
sidered now. They are thus stated in the 
report : 

" That the committee deem it highly danger- 
ous and inexpedient to impair a provision 
wisely calculated to promote the happiness and 
prosperity of the Northwestern country, and to 
give strength and security to that extensive 
frontier. In the salutary operation of this 
sagacious and benevolent restraint, it is be- 
lieved that the inhabitants of Indiana will, at 
no very distant day, find ample remuneration for 
a temporary privation of labor and of emigra- 
tion." 

Sir, these reports, made in 1803 and 1807, 
and the action of Congress upon them, in con- 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 2O9 

formity with their recommendation, saved Illi- 
nois, and perhaps Indiana, from becoming 
slave States. When the people of Illinois formed 
their State constitution, they incorporated into 
it a section providing that neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude shall hereafter be 
introduced into this State. The constitution 
made provision for the continued service of the 
few persons who were originally held as slaves, 
and then bound to service under the Territorial 
laws, and for the freedom of their children, and 
thus secured the final extinction of slavery. 
The Senator thinks that this result is not 
attributable to the ordinance. I differ from 
him. But for the ordinance, I have no doubt 
slavery would have been introduced into 
Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. It is something to 
the credit of the Era of Conservatism, uniting 
its influences with those of the expiring Era of 
Enfranchisement, that it maintained the ordi- 
nance of 1787 in the Northwest. 

The Era of CONSERVATISM passed, also by 
imperceptible gradations, into the Era of 
Slavery Propagandism. Under the influ- 
ences of this new spirit we opened the whole 
territory acquired from Mexico, except Cali- 
fornia, to the ingress of slavery. Every foot of 



2IO SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 

it was covered by a Mexican prohibition ; and 
yet, by the legislation of 1850, we consented to 
expose it to the introduction of slaves. Some, 
I believe, have actually been carried into Utah 
and New Mexico. They may be few, perhaps, 
but a few are enough to affect materially the 
probable character of their future gov^ernments. 
Under the evil influences of the same spirit, we 
are now called upon to reverse the original 
policy of the Republic ; to support even a 
solemn compact of the conservative period, and 
open Nebraska to slavery. 

Sir, I believe that we are upon the verge of an- 
other era. That era will be the Era of REACTION. 
The introduction of this question here, and its 
discussion, will greatly hasten its advent. We, 
who insist upon the denationalization of slavery, 
and upon the absolute divorce of the General 
Government from all connection with it, will 
stand with the men who favored the compro- 
mise acts, and who yet wish to adhere to them, 
in their letter and in their spirit, against the 
repeal of the Missouri prohibition. But you 
may pass it here. You may send it to the 
other House. It may become a law. But its 
effect will be to satisfy all thinking men that 
no compromises with slavery will endure, 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 211 

except so long as they serve the interests of 
slavery ; and that there is no safe and honora- 
ble ground for non-slaveholders to stand upon, 
except that of restricting slavery within State 
limits, and excluding it absolutely from the 
whole sphere of Federal jurisdiction. The old 
questions between political parties are at rest. 
No great question so thoroughly possesses the 
public mind as this of slavery. This discussion 
will hasten the inevitable reorganization of 
parties upon the new issues which our circum- 
stances suggest. It will light up a fire in the 
country which may, perhaps, consume those 
who kindle it. * * * 



CHARLES SUMNER, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
(born i8ii,died 1874,) 



ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL ; SENATE, 

MAY 25, 1854. 

I NOW present the remonstrance of a large 
number of citizens of New York against the re- 
peal of the Missouri compromise. 

I also present the memorial of the Religious 
Society of Friends, in Michigan, against the 
passage of the Nebraska bill, or any other bill 
annulling the Missouri compromise act of 
1820. 

I also present the remonstrance of the clergy 
and laity of the Baptist denomination in Michi- 
gan and Indiana, against the wrong and bad 
faith contemplated in the Nebraska bill. ^But 
this is not all. 

I hold in my hand, and now present to the 
Senate, one hundred and twenty-five separate 
remonstrances from clergymen of every Protes- 

212 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 213 

tant denomination in Maine, New Hampshire, 
Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- 
necticut, constituting the six New England 
States. These remonstrances are identical in 
character with the larger one presented by my 
distinguished colleague (Mr. Everett), — whose 
term of service here ends in a few days, by 
voluntary resignation, and who is now detained 
at home by illness, — and were originally in- 
tended as a part of it, but did not arrive in sea- 
son to be annexed to that interesting and 
weighty document. They are independent in 
form, though supplementary in their nature — 
helping to swell the protests of the pulpits of 
New England. * * * 

These remonstrances have especial signifi- 
cance, when it is urged, as it has been often in 
this debate, that the proposition still pending 
proceeds from the North. Yes, sir, proceeds 
from the North ; for that is its excuse and 
apology. The ostrich is said to hide its head 
in the sand, and then vainly imagine its coward 
body beyond the reach of its pursuers. In 
similar spirit, honorable Senators seem to shel- 
ter themselves behind certain Northern votes, 
and then vainly imagine that they are pro- 
tected from the judgment of the country. The 



214 CHARLES SUMNER. 

pulpits of New England, representing to an un- 
precedented extent the popular voice there, 
now proclaim that these six States protest, 
with all the fervor of religious conviction, 
against this measure. To this extent, at least, 
I confidently declare it does not come from the 
North. 

From these expressions, and other tokens 
which daily greet us, it is evident that at least 
the religious sentiment of the country is touch- 
ed, and, under this sentiment, I rejoice to be- 
lieve that the whole North will be quickened 
with the true life of freedom. Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, speaking to Queen Elizabeth of the spirit 
which animated every man, woman, and child 
in the Netherlands against the Spanish power, 
exclaimed : " It is the spirit of the Lord, and is 
invincible." A similar spirit is now animating 
the free States against the slave power, breath- 
ing everywhere its precious inspiration, and for- 
bidding repose under the attempted usurpation. 
The threat of disunion, so often sounded in our 
ears, will be disregarded by an aroused and in- 
dignant people. Ah, sir. Senators vainly ex- 
pect peace. Not in this way can peace come. 
In passing this bill, you scatter, broadcast 
through the land, dragon's teeth, and though 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 21 5 

they may not, as in ancient fable, spring up 
armed men, yet will they fructify in civil strife 
and feud. 

From the depths of my soul, as a loyal citizen 
and as a Senator, I plead, remonstrate, protest 
against the passage of this bill. I struggle 
against it as against death ; but, as in death it- 
self corruption puts on incorruption, and this 
mortal body puts on immortality, so from the 
sting of this hour I find assurance of that 
triumph by which freedom will be restored 
to her immortal birthright in the Republic. 

Sir, the bill, which you are now about to pass 
is at once the worst and the best bill on which 
Congress ever acted. 

It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present 
victory of slavery. In a Christian land, and in 
^n age of civilization, a time-honored statute of 
freedom is struck down, opening the way to all 
the countless woes and wrongs of human bond- 
age. Among the crimes of history a new one 
is about to be recorded, which, in better days, 
will be read with universal shame. The tea 
tax and stamp act, which aroused the patriotic 
rage of our fathers, were virtues by the side 
of this enormity ; nor would it be easy to im- 
agine, at this day, any measure which more 



2l6 CHARLES SUMNER. 

openly defied every sentiment of justice, hu- 
manity, and Christianity. Am I not right, then, 
in calling it the worst bill on which Congress 
ever acted ? 

But there is another side to which I gladly 
turn. Sir, it is the best bill on which Congress 
ever acted ; for it prepares the way for that 
" All hail hereafter," when slavery must disap- 
pear. It annuls all past compromises with 
slavery, and makes all future compromises im- 
possible. Thus it puts freedom and slavery 
face to face, and bids them grapple. Who can 
doubt the result ? It opens wide the door of 
the future, when, at last, there will really be 
a North, and the slave power will be broken ; 
when this wretched despotism will cease to 
dominate over our Government, no longer im- 
pressing itself upon all that it does, at home and 
abroad ; when the National Government shall 
be divorced in every way from slavery, and, ac- 
cording to the true intention of our fathers, 
freedom shall be established by Congress every- 
where, at least beyond the local limits of the 
States. 

Slavery will then be driven from its usurped 
foothold here in the District of Columbia ; in 
the national Territories, and elsewhere beneath 



THE KANSA S.NEBRASKA BILL. 21/ 

the national flag ; the fugitive-slave bill, as 
odious as it is unconstitutional, will become a 
dead letter; and the domestic slave-trade, 
so far as it can be reached, but especially on 
the high seas, will be blasted by Congressional 
prohibition. Everywhere within the sphere of 
Cbngress, the great Northern Hammer will 
descend to smite the wrong ; and the irre- 
sistible cry will break forth, " No more slave 
States ! " 

Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave of 
freedom in Kansas and Nebraska, I find assur- 
ances of that happy resurrection, by which 
freedom will be secured hereafter, not only in 
these Territories, but everywhere under the 
National Government, More clearly than ever 
before, I now see " the beginning of the end " 
of slavery. Am I not right, then, in calling 
this measure the best bill on which Congress 
ever acted ? 

Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are 
about to perpetrate. Joyfully I welcome all 
the promises of the future. 



STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS, 

OF ILLINOIS. 

(born I813, DIED 1861.) 



ON THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL ; SENATE, 
MARCH 3, 1854. 

It has been urged in debate that there is no 
necessity for these Territorial organizations ; and 
I have been called upon to point out any pub- 
lic and national considerations which require 
action at this time. Senators seem to forg-et 
that our immense and valuable possessions on 
the Pacific are separated from the States and 
organized Territories on this side of the Rocky 
Mountains by a vast wilderness, filled by hos- 
tile savages — that nearly a hundred thousand 
emigrants pass through this barbarous wilder- 
ness every year, on their way to California and 
Oregon — that these emigrants are American 
citizens, our own constituents, who are entitled 
to the protection of law and government, and 
that they are left to make their way, as best 
218 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 219 

they may, without the protection or aid of law 
or government. The United States mails for 
New Mexico and Utah, and official communi- 
cations between this Government and the au- 
thorities of those Territories, are required to be 
carried over these wild plains, and through the 
gorges of the mountains, where you have made 
no provisions for roads, bridges, or ferries to 
facilitate travel, or forts or other means of 
safety to protect life. As often as I have 
brought forward and urged the adoption of 
measures to remedy these evils, and af1"ord se- 
curity against the damages to which our people 
are constantly exposed, they have been prompt- 
ly voted down as not being of sufificient impor- 
tance to command the favorable consideration 
of Congress. Now, when I propose to organize 
the Territories, and allow the people to do for 
themselves what you have so often refused to 
do for them, I am told that there are not white 
inhabitants enough permanently settled in the 
country to require and sustain a government. 
True ; there is not a very large population there, 
for the very reason that your Indian code and 
intercourse laws exclude the settlers, and for- 
bid their remaining there to cultivate the soil. 
You refuse to throw the country open to set- 



220 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

tiers, and then object to the organization of the 
Territories, upon the ground that there is not a 
sufficient number of inhabitants. 

I will now proceed to the consideration of the 
great principle involved in the bill, without 
omitting, however, to notice some of those ex- 
traneous matters which have been brought into 
this discussion with the view of producing 
another antislavery agitation. We have been 
told by nearly every Senator who has spoken in 
opposition to this bill, that at the time of its 
introduction the people were in a state of pro- 
found quiet and repose, that the antislavery 
agitation had entirely ceased, and that the 
whole country was acquiescing cheerfully and 
cordially in the compromise measures of 1850 
as a final adjustment of this vexed question. 
.Sir, it is truly refreshing to hear Senators, who 
contested every inch of ground in opposition to 
those measures, when they were under discus- 
sion, who predicted all manner of evils and 
calamities from their adoption, and who raised 
the cry of appeal, and even resistance, to their 
execution, after they had become the laws of 
the land — I say it is really refreshing to hear 
these same Senators now bear their united tes- 
timony to the wisdom of those measures, and 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 221 

to the patriotic motives which induced us to 
pass them in defiance of their threats and re- 
sistance, and to their beneficial effects in restor- 
ing peace, harmony, and fraternity to a dis- 
tracted country. These are precious confes- 
sions from the lips of those who stand pledged 
never to assent to the propriety of those meas- 
ures, and to make war upon them, so long as 
they shall remain upon the statute-book. I 
well understand that these confessions are now 
made, not with the view of yielding their assent 
to the propriety of carrying those enactments 
into faithful execution, but for the purpose of 
having a pretext for charging upon me, as the 
author of this bill, the responsibility of an 
agitation which they are striving to produce. 
They say that I, and not they, have revived the 
agitation. What have I done to render me 
obnoxious to this charge ? They say that I 
wrote and introduced this Nebraska bill. That 
is true ; but I was not a volunteer in the trans- 
action. The Senate, by a unanimous vote, ap- 
pointed me chairman of the Territorial Com- 
mittee, and associated five intelligent and 
patriotic Senators with me, and thus made it 
our duty to take charge of all Territorial busi- 
ness. In like manner, and with the concurrence 



222 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

of these complaining Senators, the Senate re- 
ferred to us a distinct proposition to organize 
this Nebraska Territory, and required us to re- 
port specifically upon the question. I repeat, 
then, we were not volunteers in this business. 
The duty was imposed upon us by the Senate. 
We were not unmindful of the delicacy and re- 
sponsibility of the position. We were aware 
that, from 1820 to 1850, the abolition doctrine 
of Congressional interference with slavery in 
the Territories and new States had so far pre- 
vailed as to keep up an incessant slavery agita- 
tion in Congress, and throughout the country, 
whenever any new Territory was to be acquired 
or organized. We were also aware that, in 1850, 
the right of the people to decide this question 
for themselves, subject only to the Constitution, 
was submitted for the doctrine of Congressional 
intervention. This first question, therefore, 
which the committee were called upon to de- 
cide, and indeed the only question of any ma- 
terial importance in framing this bill, was this : 
Shall we adhere to and carry out the principle 
recognized by the compromise measures of 
1850, or shall we go back to the old exploded 
doctrine of Congressional interference, as estab- 
lished in 1820, in a large portion of the country, 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 223 

and which it was the object of the Wilmot pro- 
viso to give a universal appHcation, not only to 
all the territory which we then possessed, but 
all which we might hereafter acquire? There 
are no alternatives. We were compelled to 
frame the bill uj^on the one or the other of 
these two principles. The doctrine of 1820 or 
the doctrine of 1850 must prevail. In the dis- 
charge of the duty imposed upon us by the 
Senate, the committee could not hesitate upon 
this point, whether we consulted our own indi- 
vidual opinions and principles, or those which 
were known to be entertained and boldly 
avowed by a large majority of the Senate. 
The two great political parties of the country 
stood solemnly pledged before the world to 
adhere to the compromise measures of 1850, 
"in principle and substance." A large major- 
ity of the Senate — indeed, every member of the 
body, I believe, except the two avowed Aboli- 
tionists (Mr. Chase and Mr. Sumner) — profess 
to belong to one or the other of these parties, 
and hence were supposed to be under a high 
moral obligation to carry out " the principle 
and substance " of those measures in all new 
Territorial organizations. The report of the 
committee was in accordance with this obliga- 



224 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

tion. I am arraigned, therefore, for having en- 
deavored to represent the opinions and princi- 
ples of the Senate truly — for having performed 
my duty in conformity with parliamentary law 
— for having been faithful to the trust imposed 
in me by the Senate. Let the vote this night 
determine whether I have thus faithfully repre- 
sented your opinions. When a majority of the 
Senate shall have passed the bill — when the 
majority of the States shall have endorsed it 
through their representatives upon this floor — 
when a majority of the South and a majority 
of the North shall have sanctioned it — when a 
majority of the Whig party and a majority of 
the Democratic party shall have voted for it — 
when each of these propositions shall be dem- 
onstrated by the vote this night on the final 
passage of the bill, I shall be willing to submit 
the question to the country, whether, as the 
organ of the committee, I performed my duty 
in the report and bill which have called down 
upon my head so much denunciation and 
abuse. 

Mr. President, the opponents of this measure 
have had much to say about the mutations and 
modifications which this bill has undergone 
since it was first introduced by myself, and 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 225 

about the alleged departure of the bill, in its 
present form, from the principle laid down in 
the original report of the committee as a rule 
of action in all future Territorial organizations. 
Fortunately there is no necessity, even if your 
patience would tolerate such a course of argu- 
ment at this late hour of the night, for me to 
examine these speeches in detail, and reply to 
each charge separately. Each speaker seems 
to have followed faithfully in the footsteps of 
his leader in the path marked out by the Aboli- 
tion confederates in their manifesto, which I 
took occasion to expose on a former occasion. 
You have seen them on their winding way, 
meandering the narrow and crooked path in 
Indian file, each treading close upon the heels 
of the other, and neither venturing to take a 
step to the right or left, or to occupy one inch 
of ground which did not bear the footprint 
of the Abolition champion. To answer one, 
therefore, is to answer the whole. The state- 
ment to which they seem to attach the most 
importance, and which they have repeated 
oftener, perhaps, than any other, is, that, pend- 
ing the compromise measures of 1850, no man 
in or out of Congress ever dreamed of abrogat- 
ing the Missouri compromise ; that from that 



226 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

period down to the present session nobody 
supposed that its validity had been impaired, 
or any thing done which rendered it obhgatory 
upon us to make it inoperative hereafter; that 
at the time of submitting the report and bill to 
the Senate, on the fourth of January last, 
neither I nor any member of the committee 
ever thought of such a thing ; and that we 
could never be brought to the point of abro- 
gating the eighth section of the Missouri act 
until after the Senator from Kentucky intro- 
duced his amendment to my bill. 

Mr. President, before I proceed to expose 
the many misrepresentations contained in this 
complicated charge, I must call the attention 
of the Senate to the false issue which these 
gentlemen are endeavoring to impose upon the 
country, for the purpose of diverting public 
attention from the real issue contained in the 
bill. They wish to have the people believe 
that the abrogation of what they call the Mis- 
souri compromise was the main object and aim 
of the bill, and that the only question involved 
is, whether the prohibition of slavery north of 
36° 30' shall be repealed or not ? That which 
is a mere incident they choose to consider the 
principal. They make war on the means by 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 22/ 

which we propose to accomplish an object, 
instead of openly resisting the object itself. 
The principle which we propose to carry into 
effect by the bill is this : That Congress shall 
neither legislate slavery into any Territories or 
State, nor out of the same ; but the people shall be 
left free to regulate their domestic concerns in 
their ow?i way, subject only to the Constitution of 
the Ujiited States. 

In order to carry this principle into practical 
operation, it becomes necessary to remove what- 
ever legal obstacles might be found in the way 
of its free exercise. It is only for the purpose 
of carrying out this great fundamental principle 
of self-government that the bill renders the 
eighth section of the Missouri act inoperative 
and void. 

Now, let me ask, will these Senators who have 
arraigned me, or any one of them, have the as- 
surance to rise in his place and declare that this 
great principle was never thought of or advo- 
cated as applicable to Territorial bills, in 1850; 
that from that session until the present, nobody 
ever thought of incorporating this principle in all 
new Territorial organizations ; that the Com- 
mittee on Territories did not recommend it in 
their report ; and that it required the amend- 



228 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

ment of the Senator from Kentucky to bring 
us up to that point ? Will any one of my ac- 
cusers dare to make this issue, and let it be 
tried by the record ? I will begin with the 
compromises of 1850, Any Senator who will 
take the trouble to examine our journals, will 
find that on the 25 th of March of that year I 
reported from the Committee on Territories 
two bills including the following measures; 
the admission of California, a Territorial govern- 
ment for New Mexico, and the adjustment of 
the Texas boundary. These bills proposed to 
leave the people of Utah and New Mexico free 
to decide the slavery question for themselves, 
in the precise language of the Nebraska bill now 
under discussion. A few weeks afterward the 
committee of thirteen took those two bills and 
put a wafer between them, and reported them 
back to the Senate as one bill, with some slight 
amendments. One of these amendments was, 
that the Territorial Legislatures should not 
legislate upon the subject of African slavery. 
I objected to that provision upon the ground 
that it subverted the great principle of self- 
government upon which the bill had been 
originally framed by the Territorial Committee. 
On the first trial, the Senate refused to strike 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 229 

it out, but subsequently did so, after full debate, 
in order to establish that principle as the rule 
of action in Territorial organizations. But my 
accusers attempt to raise up a false issue, and 
thereby divert public attention from the real one, 
by the cry that the Missouri compromise is to 
be repealed or violated by the passage of this 
bill. Well, if the eighth section of the Missouri 
act, which attempted to fix the destinies of fu- 
ture generations in those Territories for all time 
to come, in utter disregard of the rights and 
wishes of the people when they should be re- 
ceived into the Union as States, be incon- 
sistent with the great principles of self-govern- 
ment and the Constitution of the United States, 
it ought to be abrogated. The legislation of 
1850 abrogated the Missouri compromise, so 
far as the country embraced within the limits 
of Utah and New Mexico was covered by the 
slavery restriction. It is true, that those acts 
did not in terms and by name repeal the act of 
1820, as originally adopted, or as extended by 
the resolutions annexing Texas in 1845, ^"^Y 
more than the report of the Committee on Ter- 
ritories proposed to repeal the same acts this 
session. But the acts of 1850 did authorize the 
people of those Territories to exercise "all right- 



230 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

ful powers of legislation consistent with the 
Constitution," not excepting the question of 
slavery ; and did provide that, when those Ter- 
ritories should be admitted into the Union, 
they should be received with or without slavery 
as the people thereof might determine at 
the date of their admission. These provisions 
were in direct conflict with a clause in the for- 
mer enactment, declaring that slavery should 
be forever prohibited in any portion of said 
Territories, and hence rendered such clause in- 
operative and void to the extent of such con- 
flict. This was an inevitable consequence, 
resulting from the provisions in those acts, 
which gave the people the right to decide the 
slavery question for themselves, in conformity 
with the Constitution. It was not necessary to 
go farther and declare that certain previous 
enactments, which were incompatible with the 
exercise of the powers conferred in the bills, 
are hereby repealed. The very act of granting 
those powers and rights has the legal effect 
of removing all obstructions to the exercise of 
them by the people, as prescribed in those Ter- 
ritorial bills. Following that example, the 
Committee on Territories did not consider it 
necessary to declare the eighth section of the 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 23 I 

Missouri act repealed. We were content to 
organize Nebraska in the precise language of 
the Utah and New Mexican bills. Our object 
was to leave the people entirely free to form 
and regulate their domestic institutions and in- 
ternal concerns in their own way, under the 
Constitution ; and we deemed it wise to ac- 
complish that object in the exact terms in 
which the same thing had been done in Utah 
and New Mexico by the acts of 1850. This 
was the principle upon which the committee 
voted ; and our bill was supposed, and is now 
believed, to have been in accordance with it. 
When doubts were raised whether the bill did 
fully carry out the principle laid down in the 
report, amendments were made from time to 
time, in order to avoid all misconstruction, and 
make the true intent of the act more explicit. 
The last of these amendments was adopted 
yesterday, on the motion of the distinguished 
Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Badger), 
in regard to the revival of any laws or regula- 
tions which may have existed prior to 1820. 
That amendment was not intended to change 
the legal effect of the bill. Its object was to 
repel the slander which had been propagated 
by the enemies of the measure in the North — 



232 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

that the Southern supporters of the bill de- 
sired to legislate slavery into these Territories. 
The South denies the right of Congress either 
to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, 
or out of any Territory or State. Non-inter- 
vention by Congress with slavery in the States 
or Territories is the doctrine of the bill, and all 
the amendments which have been agreed to 
have been made with the view of removing all 
doubt and cavil as to the true meaning and ob- 
ject of the measure * * * 

Well, sir, what is this Missouri compromise, 
of which we have heard so much of late ? It 
has been read so often that it is not necessary 
to occupy the time of the Senate in reading it 
again. It was an act of Congress, passed on 
the 6th of March, 1820, to authorize the people 
of Missouri to form a constitution and a State 
government, preparatory to the admission of 
such State into the Union. The first section 
provided that Missouri should be received into 
the Union " on an equal footing with the 
original States in all respects whatsoever." 
The last and eighth section provided that 
slavery should be " forever prohibited " in all 
the territory which had been acquired from 
France north of 36° 30', and not included 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 233 

within the h'mits of the State of Missouri. 
There is nothing in the terms of the law that pur- 
ports to be a compact, or indicates that it was 
any thing more than an ordinary act of legisla- 
tion. To prove that it was more than it pur- 
ports to be on its face, gentlemen must produce 
other evidence, and prove that there was such 
an understanding as to create a moral obligation 
in the nature of a compact. Have they shown 
it? 

Now, if this was a compact, let us see how it 
was entered into. The bill originated in the 
House of Representatives, and passed that 
body without a Southern vote in its favor. It 
is proper to remark, however, that it did not at 
that time contain the eighth section, prohibiting 
slavery in the Territories ; but in lieu of it, 
contained a provision prohibiting slavery in the 
proposed State of Missouri. In the Senate, 
the clause prohibiting slavery in the State was 
stricken out, and the eighth section added to 
the end of the bill, by the terms of which 
slavery was to be forever prohibited in the 
territory not embraced in the State of Mis- 
souri north of 36° 30'. The vote on adding 
this section stood in the Senate, 34 in the 
aflfirmative, and 10 in the negative. Of the 



234 STEPHEX ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

Northern Senators, 20 voted for it, and 2 
against it. On the question of ordering the 
bill to a third reading as amended, which was 
the test vote on its passage, the vote stood 24 
yeas and 20 nays. Of the Northern Senators, 4 
only voted in the affirmative, and 18 in the 
negative. Thus it will be seen that if it was 
intended to be a compact, the North never 
agreed to it. The Northern Senators voted to 
insert the prohibition of slavery in the Terri- 
tories ; and then, in the proportion of more 
than four to one, voted against the passage of 
the bill. The North, therefore, never signed 
the compact, never consented to it, never 
agreed to be bound by it. This fact becomes 
very important in vindicating the character of 
the North for repudiating this alleged compro- 
mise a few months afterward. The act was 
approved and became a law on the 6th of 
March, 1820. In the summer of that year, the 
people of Missouri formed a constitution and 
State government preparatory to admission 
into the Union in conformity with the act. At 
the next session of Congress the Senate passed 
a joint resolution declaring Missouri to be one 
of the States of the Union, on an equal footing 
with the original States. This resolution was 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 235 

sent to the House of Representatives, where it 
was rejected by Northern votes, and thus Mis- 
souri was voted out of the Union, instead of 
being received into the Union under the act of 
the 6th of March, 1820, now known as the 
Missouri compromise. Now, sir, what becomes 
of our plighted faith, if the act of the 6th of 
March, 1820, was a solemn compact, as we are 
nowtold? Theyhaveall rungthe changes upon 
it, that it was a sacred and irrevocable compact, 
binding in honor, in conscience, and morals, 
which could not be violated or repudiated 
without perfidy and dishonor! * * * Sir, if this 
was a compact, what must be thought of those 
who violated it almost immediately after it was 
formed ? I say it is a calumny upon the North 
to say that it was a compact. I should feel a 
flush of shame upon my cheek, as a Northern 
man, if I were to say that it was a compact, 
and that the section of the country to which I 
belong received the consideration, and then re- 
pudiated the obligation in eleven months after 
it was entered into. I deny that it was a com- 
pact, in any sense of the term. But if it was, 
the record proves that faith was not observed 
— that the contract was never carried into effect 
— that after the North had procured the passage 



236 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

of the act prohibiting slavery in the Territories, 
with a majority in the House large enough to 
prevent its repeal, Missouri was refused ad- 
mission into the Union as a slave-holding State, 
in conformity with the act of March 6, 1820. 
If the proposition be correct, as contended for 
by the opponents of this bill — that there was a 
solemn compact between the North and South 
that, in the consideration of the prohibition of 
slavery in the Territories, Missouri was to be 
admitted into the Union, in conformity with 
the act of 1820 — that compact was repudiated 
by the North, and rescinded by the joint action 
of the two parties within twelve months from 
its date. Missouri was never admitted under 
the act of the 6th of March, 1820. She was re- 
fused admission under that act. She was voted 
out of the Union by Northern votes, notwith- 
standing the stipulation that she should be 
received ; and, in consequence of these facts, a 
new compromise was rendered necessary, by the 
terms of which Missouri was to be admitted 
into the Union conditionally — admitted on a 
condition not embraced in the act of 1820, and, 
in addition, to a full compliance with all the 
provisions of said act. If, then, the act of 
1820, by the eighth section of which slavery 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 237 

was prohibited in Missouri, was a compact, it is 
clear to the comprehension of every fair-minded 
man that the refusal of the North to admit 
Missouri, in compliance with its stipulations, 
and without further conditions, imposes upon 
us a high, moral obligation to remove the pro- 
hibition of slavery in the Territories, since it 
has been shown to have been procured upon a 
condition never performed. 

Mr. President, I did not wish to refer to these 
things. I did not understand them fully in all 
their bearings at the time I made my first 
speech on this subject ; and, so far as I was 
familiar with them, I made as little reference 
to them as was consistent with my duty ; be- 
cause it was a mortifying reflection to me, as a 
Northern man, that we had not been able, in 
consequence of the abolition excitement at the 
time, to avoid the appearance of bad faith in 
the observance of legislation, which has been 
denominated a compromise. There were a few 
men then, as there are now, who had the moral 
courage to perform their duty to the country 
and the Constitution, regardless of consequences 
personal to themselves. There were ten 
Northern men who dared to perform their 
duty by voting to admit Missouri into the 



238 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

Union on an equal footing with the original 
States, and with no other restriction than that 
imposed by the Constitution. I am aware that 
they were abused and denounced as we are 
now — that they were branded as dough-faces — 
traitors to freedom, and to the section of 
country whence they came. ^ * * 

I think I have shown that if the act of 1820, 
called the Missouri compromise, was a compact, 
it was violated and repudiated by a solemn 
vote of the House of Representatives in 1821, 
within eleven months after it was adopted. It 
was repudiated by the North by a majority 
vote, and that repudiation was so complete and 
successful as to compel Missouri to make a new 
compromise, and she was brought into the 
Union under the new compromise of 1821, and 
not under the act of 1820. This reminds me of 
another point made in nearly all the speeches 
against this bill, and, if I recollect right, was 
alluded to in the abolition manifesto ; to which, 
I regret to say, I had occasion to refer so often. 
I refer to the significant hint that Mr. Clay was 
dead before any one dared to bring forward a 
proposition to undo the greatest work of his 
hands. The Senator from New York (Mr. 
Seward) has seized upon this insinuation and 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 239 

elaborated, perhaps, more fully than his com- 
peers ; and now the Abolition press, suddenly, 
and, as if by miraculous conversion, teems with 
eulogies upon Mr. Clay and his Missouri compro- 
mise of 1820. 

Now, Mr. President, does not each of these 
Senators know that Mr. Clay was not the 
author of the act of 1820? Do they not know 
that he disclaimed it in 1850 in this body ? Do 
they not know that the Missouri restriction did 
not originate in the House, of which he was a 
member ? Do they not know that Mr. Clay 
never came into the Missouri controversy as a 
compromiser until after the compromise of 
1820 was repudiated, and it became necessary 
to make another ? I dislike to be compelled to 
repeat what I have conclusively proven, that 
the compromise which Mr. Clay effected was the 
act of 182 1, under which Missouri came into 
the Union, and not the act of 1820. Mr. Clay 
made that compromise after you had repudiated 
the first one. How, then, dare you call upon 
the spirit of that great and gallant statesman to 
sanction your charge of bad faith against the 
South on this question ? * * * 

Now, Mr. President, as I have been doing 
justice to Mr. Clay on this question, perhaps I 



240 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

may as well do justice to another great man, 
who was associated with him in carrying 
through the great measures of 1850, which 
mortified the Senator from New York so much, 
because they defeated his purpose of carrying 
on the agitation. I allude to Mr, Webster. 
The authority of his great name has been 
quoted for the purpose of proving that he re- 
garded tlie Missouri act as a compact, an irre- 
pealable compact. Evidently the distinguished 
Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Everett) sup- 
posed he was doing Mr. Webster entire justice 
when he quoted the passage which he read 
from Mr. Webster's speech of the 7th of March, 
1850, when he said that he stood upon the po- 
sition that every part of the American conti- 
nent was fixed for freedom or for slavery by 
irrepealable law. The Senator says that by the 
expression " irrepealable law," Mr. Webster 
meant to include the compromise of 1820. 
Now, I will show that that was not Mr. Web- 
ster's meaning — that he was never guilty of the 
mistake of saying that the Missouri act of 1820 
was an irrepealable law. Mr. Webster said in 
that speech that every foot of territory in the 
United States was fixed as to its character for 
freedom or slavery by an irrepealable law. He 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 24 1 

then inquired if it was not so in regard to 
Texas? He went on to prove that it was; be- 
cause, he said, there was a compact in express 
terms between Texas and the United States. 
He said the parties were capable of contracting 
and that there was a valuable consideration ; 
and hence, he contended, that in that case there 
was a contract binding in honor and morals 
and law ; and that it was irrepealable without a 
breach of faith. 

He went on to say : ' 

" Now, as to California and New Mexico, I 
hold slavery to be excluded from these Terri- 
tories by a law even superior to that which ad- 
mits and sanctions it in Texas — I mean the law 
of nature — of physical geography — the law of 
the formation of the earth." 

That was the irrepealable law which he said 
prohibited slavery in the Territories of Utah 
and New Mexico. He went on to speak of the 
prohibition of slavery in Oregon, and he said it 
was an " entirely useless and, in that connec- 
tion, senseless proviso." 

He went further, and said : 

" That the whole territory of the States of 
the United States, or in the newly-acquired 
territory of the United States, has a fixed and 
settled character, now fixed and settled by law, 



242 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

which cannot be repealed in the case of Texas 
without a violation of public faith, and cannot 
be repealed by any human power in regard to 
California or New Mexico ; that, under one or 
other of these laws, every foot of territory in the 
States or in the Territories has now received a 
fixed and decided character." 

What irrepealable laws ? " One or the other " 
of those which he had stated. One was the 
Texas compact ; the other, the law of nature 
and physical geography ; and he contended 
that one or the other fixed the character of the 
whole American continent for freedom or for 
slavery. He never alluded to the Missouri 
compromise, unless it was by the allusion to 
the Wilmot proviso in the Oregon bill, and 
therein said it was a useless and, in that con- 
nection, senseless thing. Why was it a useless 
and senseless thing? Because it was re-enact- 
ing the law of God ; because slavery had 
already been prohibited by physical geography. 
Sir, that was the meaning of Mr. Webster's 
speech. * * * 

Mr. President, I have occupied a good deal 
of time in exposing the cant of these gentle- 
men about the sanctity of the Missouri com- 
promise, and the dishonor attached to the vio- 
lation of plighted faith. I have exposed these 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 243 

matters in order to show that the object of 
these men is to withdraw from public attention 
the real principle involved in the bill. They 
well know that the abrogation of the Missouri 
compromise is the incident and not the principal 
of the bill. They well understand that the re- 
port of the committee and the bill propose to 
establish the principle in all Territorial organiza- 
tions, that the question of slavery shall be re- 
ferred to the people to regulate for themselves, 
and that such legislation should be had as was 
necessary to remove all legal obstructions to 
the free exercise of this right by the people. 
The eighth section of the Missouri act standing 
in the way of this great principle must be ren- 
dered inoperative and void, whether expressly 
repealed or not, in order to give the people the 
power of regulating their own domestic institu- 
tions in their own way, subject only to the Con- 
stitution. 

Now, sir, if these gentlemen have entire con- 
fidence in the correctness of their own position, 
why do they not meet the issue boldly and 
fairly, and controvert the soundness of this 
great principle of popular sovereignty in obedi- 
ence to the Constitution ? They know full well 
that this was the principle upon which the colo- 



244 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

nies separated from the crown of Great Britain, 
the principle upon which the battles of the 
Revolution were fought, and the principle upon 
which our republican system was founded. 
They cannot be ignorant of the fact that the 
Revolution grew out of the assertion of the 
right on the part of the imperial Government 
to interfere with the internal affairs and domes- 
tic concerns of the colonies. * * * 

The Declaration of Independence had its 
origin in the violation of that great funda- 
mental principle which secured to the colonies 
the right to regulate their own domestic affairs 
in their own way ; and the Revolution resulted 
in the triumph of that principle, and the recog- 
nition of the right asserted by it. Abolitionism 
proposes to destroy the right and extinguish 
the principle for which our forefathers waged a 
seven years' bloody war, and upon which our 
whole system of free government is founded. 
They not only deny the application of this 
principle to the Territories, but insist upon 
fastening the prohibition upon all the States to 
be formed out of those Territories. Therefore, 
the doctrine of the Abolitionists — the doctrine 
of the opponents of the Nebraska and Kansas 
bill, and the advocates of the Missouri restric- 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 245 

tion — demands Congressional interference with 
slavery not only in the Territories, but in all 
the new States to be formed therefrom. It is 
the same doctrine, when applied to the Terri- 
tories and new States of this Union, which the 
British Government attempted to enforce by 
the sword upon the American colonies. It is 
this fundamental principle of self-government 
which constitutes the distinguishing feature of 
the Nebraska bill. The opponents of the prin- 
ciple are consistent in opposing the bill. I do 
not blame them for their opposition, I only 
ask them to meet the issue fairly and openly, 
by acknowledging that they are opposed to the 
principle which it is the object of the bill to 
carry into operation. It seems that there is no 
power on earth, no intellectual power, no me- 
chanical power, that can bring them to a fair 
discussion of the true issue. If they hope to 
delude the people and escape detection for any 
considerable length of time under the catch- 
words "Missouri compromise" and "faith of 
compacts," they will find that the people of this 
country have more penetration and intelligence 
than they have given them credit for. 

Mr. President, there is an important fact con- 
nected with this slavery regulation, which should 



246 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

never be lost sight of. It has always arisen 
from one and the same cause. Whenever that 
cause has been removed, the agitation has 
ceased ; and whenever the cause has been re- 
newed, the agitation has sprung into existence. 
That cause is, and ever has been, the attempt on 
the part of Congress to interfere with the ques- 
tion of slavery in the Territories and new States 
formed therefrom. Is it not wise then to con- 
fine our action within the sphere of our legiti- 
mate duties, and leave this vexed question to 
take care of itself in each State and Territory, 
according to the wishes of the people thereof, 
in conformity to the forms, and in subjection 
to the provisions, of the Constitution ? 

The opponents of the bill tell us that agita- 
tion is no part of their policy ; that their great 
desire is peace and harmony ; and they com- 
plain bitterly that I should have disturbed the 
repose of the country by the introduction of 
this measure! Let me ask these professed 
friends of peace, and avowed enemies of agita- 
tion, how the issue could have been avoided. 
They tell me that I should have let the ques- 
tion alone ; that is, that I should have left 
Nebraska unorganized, the people unprotected, 
and the Indian barrier in existence, until the 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 2\'J 

swelling tide of emigration should burst 
through, and accomplish by violence what it 
is the part of wisdom and statesmanship to di- 
rect and regulate by law. How long could you 
have postponed action with safety ? How long 
could you maintain that Indian barrier, and re- 
strain the onward march of civilization, Chris- 
tianity, and free government by a barbarian 
wall? Do you suppose that you could keep 
that vast country a howling wilderness in all 
time to come, roamed over by hostile savages, 
cutting off all safe communication between our 
Atlantic and Pacific possessions ? I tell you 
that the time for action has come, and cannot 
be postponed. It is a case in which the " let- 
alone " policy would precipitate a crisis which 
must inevitably result in violence, anarchy, and 
strife. 

You cannot fix bounds to the onward 
march of this great and growing country. You 
cannot fetter the limbs of the young giant. He 
will burst all your chains. He will expand, and 
grow, and increase, and extend civilization, Chris- 
tianity, and liberal principles. Then, sir, if you 
cannot check the growth of the country in that 
direction, is it not the part of wisdom to look 
the danger in the face, and provide for an event 



248 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

which you cannot avoid ? I tell you, sir, you 
must provide for lines of continuous settlement 
from the Mississippi valley to the Pacific ocean. 
And in making this provision, you must decide 
upon what principles the Territories shall be 
organized ; in other words, whether the people 
shall be allowed to regulate their domestic in- 
stitutions in their own way, according to the 
provisions of this bill, or whether the opposite 
doctrine of Congressional interference is to pre- 
vail. Postpone it, if you will ; but whenever 
you do act, this question must be met and 
decided. 

The Missouri compromise was interference ; 
the compromise of 1 850 was non-interference, 
leaving the people to exercise their rights under 
the Constitution. The Committee on Terri- 
tories were compelled to act on this subject. 
I, as their chairman, was bound to meet the 
question. I chose to take the responsibility 
regardless of consequences personal to myself. 
I should have done the same thing last year, if 
there had been time ; but we know, con- 
sidering the late period at which the bill then 
reached us from the House, that there was 
not sufficient time to consider the question 
fully, and to prepare a report upon the subject. 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 249 

I was, therefore, persuaded by my friends to 
allow the bill to be reported to the Senate, in 
order that such action might be taken as should 
be deemed wise and proper. The bill was never 
taken up for action — the last night of the ses- 
sion having been exhausted in debate on a mo- 
tion to take up the bill. This session, the meas- 
ure was introduced by my friend from Iowa 
(Mr. Dodge), and referred to the Territorial 
Committee during the first week of the session. 
We have abundance of time to consider the 
subject ; it is a matter of pressing necessity, 
and there was no excuse for not meeting it 
directly and fairly. We were compelled to take 
our position upon the doctrine either of inter- 
vention or non-intervention. We chose the 
latter for two reasons : first, because we be- 
lieved that the principle was right ; and, sec- 
ond, because it was the principle adopted in 
1850, to which the two great political parties of 
the country were solemnly pledged. 

There is another reason why I desire to see 
this principle recognized as a rule of action in 
all time to come. It will have the effect to de- 
stroy all sectional parties and sectional agita- 
tions. If, in the language of the report of the 
committee, you withdraw the slavery question 



250 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

from the halls of Congress and the political 
arena, and commit it to the arbitrament of 
those who are immediately interested in and 
alone responsible for its consequences, there is 
nothing left out of which sectional parties can 
be organized. It never was done, and never 
can be done on the bank, tariff, distribution, or 
any party issue which has existed, or may exist, 
after this slavery question is withdrawn from 
politics. On every other political question 
these have always supporters and opponents in 
every portion of the Union — in each State, 
county, village, and neighborhood — residing to- 
gether in harmony and good fellowship, and 
combating each other's opinions and correcting 
each other's errors in a spirit of kindness and 
friendship. These differences of opinion be- 
tween neighbors and friends, and the discus- 
sions that grow out of them, and the sympathy 
which each feels with the advocates of his own 
opinions in every portion of this widespread 
Republic, add an overwhelming and irresistible 
moral weight to the strength of the Confed- 
eracy. Affection for the Union can never be 
alienated or diminished by any other party is- 
sues than those which are joined upon sectional 
or geographical lines. When the people of the 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 25 1 

North shall all be rallied under one banner, and 
the whole South marshalled under another ban- 
ner, and each section excited to frenzy and 
madness by hostility to the institutions of the 
other, then the patriot may well tremble for the 
perpetuity of the Union. Withdraw the slav- 
ery question from the political arena, and re- 
move it to the States and Territories, each to 
decide for itself, such a catastrophe can never 
happen. Then you will never be able to tell, 
by any Senator's vote for or against any meas- 
ure, from what State or section of the Union 
he comes. 

Why, then, can we not withdraw this vexed 
question from politics ? Why can we not 
adopt the principle of this bill as a rule of ac- 
tion in all new Territorial organizations ? Why 
can we not deprive these agitators of their vo- 
cation and render it impossible for Senators to 
come here upon bargains on the slavery ques- 
tion ? I believe that the peace, the harmony, 
and perpetuity of the Union require us to go 
back to the doctrines of the Revolution, to the 
principles of the Constitution, to the principles 
of the Compromise of 1850, and leave the 
people, under the Constitution, to do as they 
may see proper in respect to their own internal 
affairs. 



252 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

Mr. President, I have not brought this ques- 
tion forward as a Northern man or as a Southern 
man. I am unwilling to recognize such divi- 
sions and distinctions. I have brought it for- 
ward as an American Senator, representing a 
State which is true to this principle, and which 
has approved of my action in respect to the 
Nebraska bill. I have brought it forward not as 
an act of justice to the South more than to the 
North. I have presented it especially as an act 
of justice to the people of those Territories and 
of the States to be formed therefrom, now and in 
all time to come. I have nothing to say about 
Northern rights or Southern rights. I know of 
no such divisions or distinctions under the 
Constitution. The bill does equal and exact 
justice to the whole Union, and every part of 
it ; it violates the right of no State or Terri- 
tory ; but places each on a perfect equality, 
and leaves the people thereof to the free enjoy- 
ment of all their rights under the Constitution. 

Now, sir, I wish to say to our Southern 
friends that if they desire to see this great prin- 
ciple carried out, now is their time to rally 
around it, to cherish it, preserve it, make it the 
rule of action in all future time. If they fail 
to do it now, and thereby allow the doctrine of 



I 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 253 

interference to prevail, upon their heads the 
consequences of that interference must rest. 
To our Northern friends, on the other hand, I 
desire to say, that from this day henceforward 
they must rebuke the slander which has been 
uttered against the South, that they desire to 
legislate slavery into the Territories. The 
South has vindicated her sincerity, her honor, 
on that point by bringing forward a provision 
negativing, in express terms, any such effect as 
a result of this bill. I am rejoiced to know that 
while the proposition to abrogate the eighth 
section of the Missouri act comes from a free 
State, the proposition to negative the conclu- 
sion that slavery is thereby introduced, comes 
from a slave-holding State. Thus, both sides fur- 
nish conclusive evidence that they go for the 
principle, and the principle only, and desire to 
take no advantage of any possible misconstruc- 
tion. 

Mr. President, I feel that I owe an apology 
to the Senate for having occupied their atten- 
tion so long, and a still greater apology for 
having discussed the question in such an inco- 
herent and desultory manner. But I could not 
forbear to claim the right of closing this debate. 
I thought gentlemen would recognize its propri- 



254 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

ety when they saw the manner in which I was 
assailed and misrepresented in the course of 
this discussion, and especially by assaults still 
more disreputable in some portions of the 
country. These assaults have had no other 
effect upon me than to give me courage and 
energy for a still more resolute discharge of 
duty. I say frankly that, in my opinion, this 
measure will be as popular at the North as at 
the South, when its provisions and principles 
shall have been fully developed, and become 
well understood. The people at the North 
are attached to the principles of self-govern- 
ment, and you cannot convince them that that 
is self-government which deprives a people of 
the right of legislating for themselves, and 
compels them to receive laws which are forced 
upon them by a Legislature in which they are 
not represented. We are willing to stand upon 
this great principle of self-government every- 
where ; and it is to us a proud reflection that, 
in this whole discussion, no friend of the bill 
has urged an argument in its favor which could 
not be used with the same propriety in a free 
State as in a slave State, and vice versa. No 
enemy of the bill has used an argument which 
would bear repetition one mile across Mason 



THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL. 255 

and Dixon's line. Our opponents have dealt 
entirely in sectional appeals. The friends of 
the bill have discussed a great principle of uni- 
versal application, which can be sustained by 
the same reasons, and the same arguments, in 
every time and in every corner of the Union. 



CHARLES SUMNER. 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(BORN 181I, DIED 1874.) 



ON THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS ; SENATE, 
MAY 19-20, 1856. 

Mr. President : 

You are now called to redress a great trans- 
gression. Seldom in the history of nations has 
such a question been presented. Tariffs, Army 
bills, Navy bills, Land bills, are important, and 
justly occupy your care ; but these all belong 
to the course of ordinary legislation. As means 
and instruments only, they are necessarily sub- 
ordinate to the conservation of government 
itself. Grant them or deny them, in greater or 
less degree, and you will inflict no shock. The 
machinery of government will continue to 
move. The State will not cease to exist. Far 
otherwise is it with the eminent question now 
before you, involving, as it does. Liberty in a 
broad territory, and also involving the peace of 
256 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 257 

the whole country, with our good name in his- 
tory forever more. 

Take down your map, sir, and you will find 
that the Territory of Kansas, more than any 
other region, occupies the middle spot of North 
America, equally distant from the Atlantic on 
the east, and the Pacific on the west ; from the 
frozen waters of Hudson's Bay on the north, 
and the tepid Gulf Stream on the south, consti- 
tuting the precise territorial centre of the whole 
vast continent. To such advantages of situa- 
tion, on the very highway between two oceans, 
are added a soil of unsurpassed richness, and a 
fascinating, undulating beauty of surface, with 
a health-giving climate, calculated to nurture a 
powerful and generous people, worthy to be a 
central pivot of American institutions. A few 
short months only have passed since this spa- 
cious and mediterranean country was open only 
to the savage who ran wild in its woods and 
prairies ; and now it has already drawn to its 
bosom a population of freemen larger than 
Athens crowded within her historic gates, when 
her sons, under Miltiades, won liberty for man- 
kind on the field of Marathon ; more than Sparta 
contained when she ruled Greece, and sent forth 
her devoted children, quickened by a mother's 



258 CHARLES SUMNER. 

benediction, to return with their shields, or 
on them ; more than Rome gathered on her 
seven hills, when, under her kings, she com- 
menced that sovereign sway, which afterward 
embraced the whole earth ; more than London 
held, when, on the fields of Crecy and Agin- 
court, the English banner was carried victori- 
ously over the chivalrous hosts of France. 

Against this Territory, thus fortunate in 
position and population, a crime has been com- 
mitted, which is without example in the records 
of the past. Not in plundered provinces or in 
the cruelties of selfish governors will you find its 
parallel ; and yet there is an ancient instance, 
which may show at least the path of justice. 
In the terrible impeachment by which the great 
Roman orator has blasted through all time the 
name of Verres, amidst charges of robbery and 
sacrilege, the enormity which most aroused 
the indignant voice of his accuser, and which 
still stands forth with strongest distinctness, 
arresting the sympathetic indignation of all who 
read the story, is, that away in Sicily he had 
scourged a citizen of Rome — that the cry, " I 
am a Roman citizen," had been interposed in 
vain against the lash of the tyrant governor. 
Other charges were, that he had carried away 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 259 

productions of art, and that he had violated the 
sacred shrines. It was in the presence of the 
Roman Senate that this arraignment pro- 
ceeded ; in a temple of the Forum ; amidst 
crowds — such as no orator had ever before 
drawn together — thronging the porticos and 
collonnades, even clinging to the house-tops and 
neighboring slopes — and under the anxious 
gaze of witnesses summoned from the scene of 
crime. But an audience grander far — of higher 
dignity — of more various people, and of wider 
intelligence — the countless multitude of suc- 
ceeding generations, in every land, where elo- 
quence has been studied, or where the Roman 
name has been recognized, — has listened to 
the accusation, and throbbed with condemna- 
tion of the criminal. Sir, speaking in an age 
of light, and a land of constitutional liberty, 
where the safeguards of elections are justly 
placed among the highest triumphs of civiliza- 
tion, I fearlessly assert that the wrongs of 
much-abused Sicily, thus memorable in history, 
were small by the side of the wrongs of Kansas, 
where the very shrines of popular institutions, 
more sacred than any heathen altar, have been 
desecrated ; where the ballot-box, more precious 
than any work, in ivory or marble, from the 



26o CHARLES SUMNER, 

cunning hand of art, has been plundered ; and 
where the cry, '' I am an American citizen," has 
been interposed in vain against outrage of 
every kind, even upon life itself. Are you 
against sacrilege ? I present it for your exe- 
cration. Are you against robbery ? I hold it 
up to your scorn. Are you for the protection 
of American citizens ? I show you how their 
dearest rights have been cloven down, while a 
Tyrannical Usurpation has sought to install 
itself on their very necks ! 

But the wickedness which I now begin to ex- 
pose is immeasurably aggravated by the motive 
which prompted it. Not in any common lust 
for power did this uncommon tragedy have its 
origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, 
compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery ; 
and it may be clearly traced to a depraved 
longing for a new slave State, the hideous off- 
spring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to 
the power of slavery in the National Govern- 
ment. Yes, sir, when the whole world, alike 
Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn 
this wrong, and to make it a hissing to the na- 
tions, here in our Republic, /"t'r^^ — ay, sir, FORCE 
— has been openly employed in compelling 
Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 261 

of political power. There is the simple fact, 
which you will in vain attempt to deny, but 
which in itself presents an essential wickedness 
that makes other public crimes seem like public 
virtues. 

But this enormity, vast beyond comparison, 
swells to dimensions of wickedness which the 
imagination toils in vain to grasp, when it is 
understood that for this purpose are hazarded 
the horrors of intestine feud not only in this 
distant Territory, but everywhere throughout 
the country. Already the muster has begun. 
The strife is no longer local, but national. 
Even now, while I speak, portents hang on all 
the arches of the horizon threatening to darken 
the broad land, which already yawns with the 
mutterings of civil war. The fury of the propa- 
gandists of Slavery, and the calm determination 
of their opponents, are now diffused from the 
distant Territory over widespread communities, 
and the whole country, in all its extent — mar- 
shalling hostile divisions, and foreshadowing a 
strife which, unless happily averted by the tri- 
umph of Freedom, will become war — fratricidal, 
parricidal war — with an accumulated wicked- 
ness beyond the wickedness of any war in 
human annals; justly provoking the avenging 



262 CHARLES SUMNER. 

judgment of Providence and the avenging pen 
of history, and constituting a strife, in the lan- 
guage of the ancient writer, more than foreign, 
more than social, more than civil; but some- 
thing compounded of all these strifes, and in 
itself more than war ; sed potius commune quod- 
dam ex omnibus, et plus quam bcllum. 

Such is the crime which you are to judge. 
But the criminal also must be dragged into 
day, that you may see and measure the power 
by which all this wrong is sustained. From no 
common source could it proceed. In its per- 
petration was needed a spirit of vaulting ambi- 
tion which would hesitate at nothing ; a hardi- 
hood of purpose which was insensible to the 
judgment of mankind ; a madness for Slavery 
which would disregard the Constitution, the 
laws, and all the great examples of our history; 
also a consciousness of power such as comes 
from the habit of power ; a combination of en- 
ergies found only in a hundred arms directed 
by a hundred eyes ; a control of public opinion 
through venal pens and a prostituted press; an 
ability to subsidize crowds in every vocation of 
life — the politician with his local importance, 
the lawyer with his subtle tongue, and even the 
authority of the judge on the bench ; and a 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 263 

familiar use of men in places high and low, so 
that none, from the President to the lowest 
border postmaster, should decline to be its tool ; 
all these things and more were needed, and they 
were found in the slave power of our Republic. 
There, sir, stands the criminal, all unmasked 
before you — heartless, grasping, and tyrannical 
— with an audacity beyond that of Verres, a sub- 
tlety beyond that of Machiavel, a meanness 
beyond that of Bacon, and an ability beyond 
that of Hastings. Justice to Kansas can be se- 
cured only by the prostration of this influence ; 
for this the power behind — greater than any 
President — which succors and sustains the 
crime. Nay, the proceedings I now arraign 
derive their fearful consequences only from this 
connection. 

In now opening this great matter, I am not 
insensible to the austere demands of the occa- 
sion ; but the dependence of the crime against 
Kansas upon the slave power is so peculiar and 
important, that I trust to be pardoned while I 
impress it with an illustration, which to some 
may seem trivial. It is related in Northern 
mythology that the god of Force, visiting an 
enchanted region, was challenged by his royal 
entertainer to what seemed an humble feat of 



264 CHARLES SUMNER. 

strength — merely, sir, to lift a cat from the 
ground. The god smiled at the challenge, and, 
calmly placing his hand under the belly of the 
animal, with superhuman strength strove, while 
the back of the feline monster arched far up- 
ward, even beyond reach, and one paw actually 
forsook the earth, until at last the discomfited 
divinity desisted ; but he was little surprised at 
his defeat when he learned that this creature, 
which seemed to be a cat, and nothing more, 
was not merely a cat, but that it belonged to 
and was a part of the great Terrestrial Serpent, 
which, in its innumerable folds, encircled the 
whole globe. Even so the creature, whose 
paws are now fastened upon Kansas, whatever 
it may seem to be, constitutes in reality a part 
of the slave power, which, in its loathsome 
folds, is now coiled about the whole land. 
Thus do I expose the extent of the present 
contest, where we encounter not merely local 
resistance, but also the unconquered sustaining 
arm behind. But out of the vastness of the 
crime attempted, with all its woe and shame, I 
derive a well-founded assurance of a commen- 
surate vastness of effort against it by the 
aroused masses of the country, determined not 
only to vindicate Right against Wrong, but to 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 265 

redeem the Republic from the thraldom of that 
Oligarchy which prompts, directs, and concen- 
trates the distant wrong. 

Such is the crime, and such the criminal, 
which it is my duty in this debate to expose, 
and, by the blessing of God, this duty shall be 
done completely to the end. ■?«•** 

But, before entering upon the argument, I 
must say something of a general character, par- 
ticularly in response to what has fallen from 
Senators who have raised themselves to emi- 
nence on this floor in championship of human 
wrongs. I mean the Senator from South Caro- 
lina (Mr. Butler), and the Senator from Illinois 
(Mr. Douglas), who, though unlike as Don 
Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, 
sally forth together in the same adventure. I 
regret much to miss the elder Senator from his 
seat; but the cause, against which he has run a 
tilt, with such activity of animosity, demands 
that the opportunity of exposing him should 
not be lost ; and it is for the cause that I speak. 
The Senator from South Carolina has read 
many books of chivalry, and believes himself a 
chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor 
and courage. Of course he has chosen a mis- 
tress to whom he has made his vows, and who, 



266 CHARLES SUMNER. 

though ugly to others, is always lovely to him ; 
though polluted in the sight of the world, is 
chaste in his sight — I mean the harlot, Slavery. 
For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. 
Let her be impeached in character, or any 
proposition made to shut her out from the ex- 
tension of her wantonness, and no extravagance 
of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too 
great for this Senator. The frenzy of Don 
Quixote, in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del 
Toboso, is all surpassed. The asserted rights 
of Slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, 
are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. 
If the slave States cannot enjoy what, in 
mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, 
he misnames equality under the Constitution — 
in other words, the full power in the National 
Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, 
to separate husband and wife, and to sell little 
children at the auction block — then, sir, the 
chivalric Senator will conduct the State of 
South Carolina out of the Union ! Heroic 
knight! Exalted Senator! A second Moses 
come for a second exodus ! 

But not content with this, poor menace, 
which we have been twice told was " measured," 
the Senator in the unrestrained chivalry of his 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 267 

nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious 
words to those who differ from him on this 
floor. He calls them " sectional and fanatical ;" 
and opposition to the usurpation in Kansas he 
denounces as " an uncalculating fanaticism." 
To be sure these charges lack all grace of 
originality, and all sentiment of truth ; but the 
adventurous Senator does not hesitate. He is 
the uncompromising, unblushing representative 
on this floor of a flagrant sectionalism, which 
now domineers over the Republic, and yet with 
a ludicrous ignorance of his own position — 
unable to see himself as others see him — or 
with an effrontery which even his white head 
ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to 
those here who resist his sectionalism the very 
epithet which designates himself. The men 
who strive to bring back the Government to its 
original policy, when Freedom and not Slavery 
was sectional, he arraigns as sectional. This 
will not do. It involves too great a perversion 
of terms. I tell that Senator that it is to him- 
self, and to the " organization " of which he is 
the " committed advocate," that this epithet 
belongs. I now fasten it upon them. For 
myself, I care little for names ; but since the 
question has been raised here, I afifirm that the 



268 CHARLES SUMNER. 

Republican party of the Union is in no just 
sense sectional, but, more than any other party, 
national; and that it now goes forth to dislodge 
from the high places of the Government the 
tyrannical sectionalism of which the Senator 
from South Carolina is one of the maddest 
zealots. * * * 

As the Senator from South Carolina, is the 
Don Quixote, the Senator from Illinois (Mr. 
Douglas) is the Squire of Slavery, its very 
Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating 
offices. This Senator, in his labored address, 
vindicating his labored report — piling one mass 
of elaborate error upon another mass — con- 
strained himself, as you will remember, to un- 
familiar decencies of speech. Of that address 
I have nothing to say at this moment, though 
before I sit down I shall show something of its 
fallacies. But I go back now to an earlier occa- 
sion, when, true to his native impulses, he 
threw into this discussion, " for a charm of 
powerful trouble," personalities most discredit- 
able to this body, I will not stop to repel the 
imputations which he cast upon myself ; but I 
mention them to remind you of the " sweltered 
venom sleeping got," which, with other 
poisoned ingredients, he cast into the caldron 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 269 

of this debate. Of other things I speak. Stand- 
ing on this floor, the Senator issued his rescript, 
requiring submission to the Usurped Power of 
Kansas ; and this was accompanied by a man- 
ner — all his own — such as befits the tyrannical 
threat. Very well. Let the Senator try. I 
tell him now that he cannot enforce any such 
submission. The Senator, with the slave 
power at his back, is strong ; but he is not 
strong enough for this purpose. He is bold. 
He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he 
may cry, " Vaudace ! Vandace ! toujours fau- 
dacc ! " but even his audacity cannot compass 
this work. The Senator copies the British 
officer who, with boastful swagger, said that 
with the hilt of his sword he would cram the 
" stamps " down the throats of the American 
people, and he will meet a similar failure. He 
may convulse this country with a civil feud. 
Like the ancient madman, he may set fire to 
this Temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander 
than the Ephesian dome ; but he cannot en- 
force obedience to that Tyrannical Usurpation. 
The Senator dreams that he can subdue the 
North. He disclaims the open threat, but his 
conduct still implies it. How little that Senator 
knows himself or the strength of the cause 



270 CHARLES SUMNER. 

which he persecutes ! He is but a mortal man ; 
against him is an immortal principle. With 
finite power he wrestles with the infinite, and 
he must fall. Against him are stronger bat- 
talions than any marshalled by mortal arm — the 
inborn, ineradicable, invincible sentiments of 
the human heart ; against him is nature in all 
her subtle forces ; against him is God. Let 
him try to subdue these. * * * 

With regret, I come again upon the Senator 
from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), who, omni- 
present in this debate, overflowed with rage at 
the simple suggestion that Kansas had applied 
for admission as a State ; and, with incoherent 
phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of 
his speech, now upon her representative, and 
then upon her people. There was no extrava- 
gance of the ancient parliamentary debate, 
which he did not repeat ; nor was there any 
possible deviation from truth which he did not 
make, with so much of passion, I am glad 
to add, as to save him from the suspicion of 
intentional aberration. But the Senator touches 
nothing which he does not disfigure — with error, 
sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He 
shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in 
stating the Constitution, or in stating the law, 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 2/1 

whether in the details of statistics or the diver- 
sions of scholarship. He cannot ope his mouth, 
but out there flies a blunder. Surely he ought 
to be familiar with the life of Franklin ; and yet 
he referred to this household character, while 
acting as agent of our fathers in England, as 
above suspicion ; and this was done that he 
might give point to a false contrast with the 
agent of Kansas — not knowing that, however 
they may differ in genius and fame, in this ex- 
perience they are alike : that Franklin, when 
entrusted with the petition of Massachusetts 
Bay, was assaulted by a foul-mouthed speaker, 
where he could not be heard in defence, and 
denounced as a " thief," even as the agent of 
Kansas has been assaulted on this floor, and 
denounced as a " forger." And let not the 
vanity of the Senator be inspired by the parallel 
with the British statesman of that day ; for 
it is only in hostility to Freedom that any 
parallel can be recognized. 

But it is against the people of Kansas that 
the sensibilities of the Senator are particularly 
aroused. Coming, as he announces, " from a 
State " — ay, sir, from South Carolina — he turns 
with lordly disgust from this newly-formed 
community, which he will not recognize even 



272 CHARLES SUMNER. 

as a " body politic." Pray, sir, by what title 
does he indulge in this egotism ? Has he read 
the history of " the State " which he represents? 
He cannot surely have forgotten its shameful 
imbecility from Slavery, confessed throughout 
the Revolution, followed by its more shameful 
assumptions for Slavery since. He cannot have 
forgotten its wretched persistence in the slave- 
trade as the very apple of its eye, and the con- 
dition of its participation in the Union. He 
cannot have forgotten its constitution, which is 
Republican only in name, confirming power in 
the hands of the few, and founding the qualifi- 
cations of its legislators on " a settled freehold 
estate and ten negroes." And yet the Senator, 
to whom that " State " has in part committed 
the guardianship of its good name, instead of 
moving, with backward treading steps, to cover 
its nakedness, rushes forward in the very ecstasy 
of madness, to expose it by provoking a com- 
parison with Kansas. South Carolina is old ; 
Kansas is young. South Carolina counts by 
centuries ; where Kansas counts by years. But 
a beneficent example may be born in a day ; 
and I venture to say, that against the two cen- 
turies of the older " State," may be already 
set the two years of trial, evolving correspond- 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 2/3 

ing virtue, in the younger community. In the 
one, is the long wail of Slavery ; in the other, 
the hymns of Freedom. And if we glance at 
special achievements, it will be difificult to find 
any thing in the history of South Carolina 
which presents so much of heroic spirit in an 
heroic cause as appears in that repulse of the 
Missouri invaders by the beleaguered town of 
Lawrence, where even the women gave their 
effective efforts to Freedom. The matrons of 
Rome, who poured their jewels into the treas- 
ury for the public defence — the wives of Prussia, 
who, with delicate fingers, clothed their de- 
fenders against French invasion — the mothers 
of our own Revolution, who sent forth their 
sons, covered with prayers and blessings, to 
combat for human rights, did nothing of self- 
sacrifice truer than did these women on this 
occasion. Were the whole history of South 
Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very 
beginning down to the day of the last election 
of the Senator to his present seat on this floor, 
civilization might lose — I do not say how 
little ; but surely less than it has already gained 
by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle 
against oppression, and in the development of 
a new science of emigration. Already, in Law- 



274 CHARLES SUMNER. 

rence alone, there are newspapers and schools, 
including a High School, and throughout this 
infant Territory there is more mature scholar- 
ship far, in proportion to its inhabitants, than 
in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the Sena- 
tor that Kansas, welcomed as a free State, will 
be a " ministering angel " to the Republic, 
when South Carolina, in the cloak of darkness 
which she hugs, "lies howling." 

The Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) 
naturally joins the Senator from South Car- 
olina in this warfare, and gives to it the supe- 
rior intensity of his nature. He thinks that 
the National Government has not completely 
proved its power, as it has never hanged a 
traitor ; but, if the occasion requires, he hopes 
there will be no hesitation ; and this threat 
is directed at Kansas, and even at the friends of 
Kansas throughout the country. Again occurs 
the parallel with the struggle of our fathers, 
and I borrow the language of Patrick Henry, 
when, to the cry from the Senator, of " trea- 
son," " treason," I reply, " if this be treason, 
make the most of it." Sir, it is easy to call 
names ; but I beg to tell the Senator that 
if the word " traitor " is in any way applicable 
to those who refuse submission to a Tyrannical 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 2/5 

Usurpation, whether in Kansas or elsewhere, 
then must some new word, of deeper color, be 
invented, to designate those mad spirits who 
could endanger and degrade the Republic, 
while they betray all the cherished sentiments 
of the fathers and the spirit of the Constitu- 
tion, in order to give new spread to Slavery. 
Let the Senator proceed. It will not be the 
first time in history, that a scaffold erected for 
punishment has become a pedestal of honor. 
Out of death comes life, and the "traitor" 
whom he blindly executes will live immortal in 
the cause. 

" For Humanity sweeps onward ; where to-day the martyr 

stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas, with the silver in his 

hands ; 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return, 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn." 

Among these hostile Senators, there is yet 
another, with all the prejudices of the Senator 
from South Carolina, but without his generous 
impulses, who, on account of his character be- 
fore the country, and the rancor of his opposi- 
tion, deserves to be named. I mean the Sena- 
tor from Virginia (Mr. Mason), who, as the 
author of the Fugitive-Slave bill, has associated 



2/6 CHARLES SUMNER. 

himself with a special act of inhumanity and 
tyranny. Of him I shall say little, for he has 
said little in this debate, though within that 
little was compressed the bitterness of a life ab- 
sorbed in the support of Slavery, He holds the 
commission of Virginia; but he does not repre- 
sent that early Virginia, so dear to our hearts, 
which gave to us the pen of Jefferson, by 
which the equality of men was declared, and 
the sword of Washington, by which Independ- 
ence was secured ; but he represents that other 
Virginia, from which Washington and Jefferson 
now avert their faces, where human beings are 
bred as cattle for the shambles, and where 
a dungeon rewards the pious matron who 
teaches little children to relieve their bondage 
by reading the Book of Life. It is proper that 
such a Senator, representing such a State, 
should rail against free Kansas. 

Senators such as these are the natural ene- 
mies of Kansas, and I introduce them with 
reluctance, simply that the country may under- 
stand the character of the hostility which must 
be overcome. Arrayed with them, of course, 
are all who unite, under any pretext or apology, 
in the propagandism of human Slavery. To 
such, indeed, the time-honored safeguards of 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 2/7 

popular rights can be a name only, and nothing 
more. What are trial by jury, habeas corpus, 
the ballot-box, the right of petition, the liberty 
of Kansas, your liberty, sir, or mine, to one who 
lends himself, not merely to the support at 
home, but to the propagandism abroad, of that 
preposterous wrong, which denies even the 
right of a man to himself ! Such a cause can 
be maintained only by a practical subversion of 
all rights. It is, therefore, merely according to 
reason that its partisans should uphold the 
Usurpation in Kansas. 

To overthrow this Usurpation is now the 
special, importunate duty of Congress, admit- 
ting of no hesitation or postponement. To this 
end it must lift itself from the cabals of candi- 
dates, the machinations of party, and the low 
level of vulgar strife. It must turn from that 
Slave Oligarchy which now controls the Re- 
public, and refuse to be its tool. Let its power 
be stretched forth toward this distant Territory, 
not to bind, but to unbind ; not for the oppres- 
sion of the weak, but for the subversion of the 
tyrannical ; not for the prop and maintenance 
of a revolting Usurpation, but for the confirma- 
tion of Liberty. 

" These are imperial arts and worthy thee ! " 



278 CHARLES SUMNER. 

Let it now take its stand between the living 
and dead, and cause this plague to be stayed. 
All this it can do ; and if the interests of Slavery 
did not oppose, all this it would do at once, in 
reverent regard for justice, law, and order, 
driving away all the alarms of war ; nor would 
it dare to brave the shame and punishment of 
this great refusal. But the slave power dares 
any thing ; and it can be conquered only by the 
united masses of the people. From Congress 
to the People I appeal. * * * 

The contest, which, beginning in Kansas, has 
reached us, will soon be transferred from Con- 
gress to a broader stage, where every citizen 
will be not only spectator, but actor ; and to 
their judgment I confidently appeal. To the 
People, now on the eve of exercising the elec- 
toral franchise, in choosing a Chief Magistrate 
of the Republic, I appeal, to vindicate the 
electoral franchise in Kansas. Let the ballot- 
box of the Union, with multitudinous might, 
protect the ballot-box in that Territory. Let the 
voters everywhere, while rejoicing in their own 
rights, help to guard the equal rights of distant 
fellow-citizens ; that the shrines of popular in- 
stitutions, now desecrated, may be sanctified 
anew ; that the ballot-box, now plundered, may 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 279 

be restored ; and that the cry, " I am an Ameri- 
can citizen," may not be sent forth in vain 
against outrage of every kind. In just regard 
for free labor in that Territory, which it is 
sought to blast by unwelcome association with 
slave labor ; in Christian sympathy with the 
slave, whom it is proposed to task and sell 
there ; in stern condemnation of the crime 
which has been consummated on that beautiful 
soil ; in rescue of fellow-citizens now subjugated 
to a Tyrannical Usurpation ; in dutiful respect 
for the early fathers, whose aspirations are now 
ignobly thwarted ; in the name of the Constitu- 
tion, which has been outraged — of the laws 
trampled down — of Justice banished — of Hu- 
manity degraded — of Peace destroyed — of Free- 
dom crushed to earth ; and, in the name of the 
Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect Free- 
dom, I make this last appeal. 

May 20, 1856. 
Mr; Douglas:— I shall not detain the Senate 
by a detailed reply to the speech of the Sena- 
tor from Massachusetts. Indeed, I should not 
deem it necessary to say one word, but for the 
personalities in which he has indulged, evincing 
a depth of malignity that issued from every 
sentence, making it a. matter of self-respect with 



280 CHARLES SUMNER. 

me to repel the assaults which have been made. 

As to the argument, we have heard it all be- 
fore. Not a position, not a fact, not an argu- 
ment has he used, which has not been employed 
on the same side of the chamber, and replied 
to by me twice. I shall not follow him, there- 
fore, because it would only be repeating the same 
answer which I have twice before given to each 
of his positions. He seems to get up a speech 
as in Yankee land they get up a bedquilt. 
They take all the old calico dresses of various 
colors, that have been in the house from the 
days of their grandmothers, and invite the 
young ladies of the neighborhood in the after- 
noon, and the young men to meet them at a 
dance in the evening. They cut up these pieces 
of old dresses and make pretty figures, and 
boast of what beautiful ornamental work they 
have made, although there was not a new piece 
of material in the whole quilt. Thus it is 
with the speech which we have had re- 
hashed here to-day, in regard to matters of 
fact, matters of law, and matters of argument — 
every thing but the personal assaults and the 
malignity. * * * 

His endeavor seems to be an attempt to 
whistle to keep up his courage by defiant as- 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 28 1 

saults upon us all. I am in doubt as to what 
can be his object. He has not hesitated to 
charge three fourths of the Senate with fraud, 
with swindling, with crime, with infamy, at 
least one hundred times over in his speech. Is 
it his object to provoke some of us to kick him 
as we would a dog in the street, that he may get 
sympathy upon the just chastisement ? What 
is the object of this denunciation against the 
body of which we are members? A hundred 
times he has called the Nebraska bill a 
" swindle," an act of crime, an act of infamy, 
and each time went on to illustrate the com.- 
plicity of each man who voted for it in perpe- 
trating the crime. He has brought it home as 
a personal charge to those who passed the Ne- 
braska bill, that they were guilty of a crime 
which deserved the just indignation of heaven, 
and should make them infamous among men. 

Who are the Senators thus arraigned ? He 
does me the honor to make me the chief. It 
was my good luck to have such a position in this 
body as to enable me to be the author of a 
great, wise measure, which the Senate has ap- 
proved, and the country will endorse. That 
measure was sustained by about three fourths 
of all the members of the Senate. It was sus- 



282 CHARLES SUMNER. 

tained by a majority of the Democrats and a 
majority of the Whigs in this body. It was 
sustained by a majority of Senators from the 
slave-holding States, and a majority of Senators 
from the free States. The Senator, by his 
charge of crime, then, stultifies three fourths of 
the whole body, a majority of the North, nearly 
the whole South, a majority of Whigs, and 
a majority of Democrats here. He says 
they are infamous. If he so believed, who 
could suppose that he would ever show his face 
among such a bodyof men ? How dare he ap- 
proach one of those gentlemen to give him his 
hand after that act •* If he felt the courtesies 
between men he would not do it. He would 
deserve to have himself spit in the face for 
doing so. * * * 

The attack of the Senator from Massachu- 
setts now is not on me alone. Even the cour- 
teous and the accomplished Senator from South 
Carolina (Mr. Butler) could not be passed by in 
his absence. 

Mr. Mason : — Advantage was taken of it. 

Mr. Douglas: — It is suggested that advan- 
tage is taken of his absence. I think that this is 
a mistake. I think the speech was written and 
practised, and the gestures fixed ; and, if that 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 283 

part had been stricken out the Senator would 
not have known how to repeat the speech. 
All that tirade of abuse must be brought down 
on the head of the venerable, the courteous, 
and the distinguished Senator from South Caro- 
lina. I shall not defend that gentleman here. 
Every Senator who knows him loves him. The 
Senator from Massachusetts may take every 
charge made against him in his speech, and 
may verify by his oath, and by the oath of 
every one of his confederates, and there is not 
an honest man in this chamber who will not re- 
pel it as a slander. Your oaths cannot make 
a Senator feel that it was not an outrage to as- 
sail that honorable gentleman in the terms in 
which he has been attacked. He, however, 
will be here in due time to speak for himself, 
and to act for himself too. I know what will 
happen. The Senator from Massachusetts will 
go to him, whisper a secret apology in his ear, 
and ask him to accept that as satisfaction for a 
public outrage on his character ! I know the 
Senator from Massachusetts is in the habit of 
doing those things. I have had some experi- 
ence of his skill in that respect. * * * 

Why these attacks on individuals by name, 
and two thirds of the Senate collectively? Is it 



284 CHARLES SUMNER. 

the object to drive men here to dissolve social 
relations with poHtical opponents ? Is it to turn 
the Senate into a bear garden, where Senators 
cannot associate on terms which ought to pre- 
vail between gentlemen? These attacks are 
heaped upon me by man after man. When I 
repel them, it is intimated that I show some 
feeling on the subject. Sir, God grant that 
when I denounce an act of infamy I shall do it 
with feeling, and do it under the sudden impul- 
ses of feeling, instead of sitting up at night writ- 
ing out my denunciation of a man whom I hate, 
copying it, having it printed, punctuating the 
proof-sheets, and repeating it before the glass, 
in order to give refinement to insult, which is 
only pardonable when it is the outburst of a 
just indignation. 

Mr. President, I shall not occupy the time of 
the Senate. I dislike to be forced to repel 
these attacks upon myself, which seem to be re- 
peated on every occasion. It appears that gen- 
tlemen on the other side of the chamber think 
they would not be doing justice to their cause 
if they did not makemyself a personal object of 
bitter denunciation and malignity. I hope that 
the debate on this bill may be brought to a close 
at as early a day as possible. I shall do no more 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 285 

in these side discussions than vindicate myself 
and repel unjust attacks, but I shall ask the 
Senate to permit me to close the debate, when 
it shall close, in a calm, kind summary of the 
whole question, avoiding personalities. 

Mr. Sumner : — Mr. President, To the Sena- 
tor from Illinois, I should willingly leave the priv- 
ilege of the common scold — the last word ; but 
I will not leave to him, in any discussion with 
me, the last argument, or the last semblance of 
it. He has crowned the audacity of this de- 
bate by venturing to rise here and calumniate 
me. He said that I came here, took an oath to 
support the Constitution, and yet determined 
not to support a particular clause in that Con- 
stitution. To that statement I give, to his 
face, the flattest denial. When it was made on 
a former occasion on this floor by the absent 
Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), I 
then repelled it. I will read from the debate of 
the 28th of June, 1854, as published in the 
Globe, to show what I said in response to that 
calumny when pressed at that hour. Here is 
what I said to the Senator from South Carolina : 

" This Senator was disturbed, when to his 
inquiry, personally, pointedly, and vehemently 
addressed to me, whether I would join in return- 



286 CHARLES SUMNER. 

ing a fellow-man to slavery? I exclaimed, 
' Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this 
thing ? ' " 

You will observe that the inquiry of the Sen- 
ator from South Carolina, was whether I would 
join in returning a fellow-man to slavery. It 
was not whether I would support any clause of 
the Constitution of the United States — far 
from that. * * * 

Sir, this is the Senate of the United States, 
an important body, under the Constitution, 
with great powers. Its members are justly 
supposed, from age, to be above the intem- 
perance of youth, and from character to be 
above the gusts of vulgarity. They are sup- 
posed to have something of wisdom, and some- 
thing of that candor which is the handmaid of 
wisdom. Let the Senator bear these things in 
mind, and let him remember hereafter that the 
bowie-knife and bludgeon are not the proper 
emblems of Senatorial debate. Let him re- 
member that the swagger of Bob Acres and the 
ferocity of the Malay cannot add dignity to 
this body. The Senator has gone on to infuse 
into his speech the venom which has been swel- 
tering for months — ay, for years ; and he has 
alleged facts that are entirely without founda- 



I 



CRIME AGAINST KANSAS. 287 

tion, in order to heap upon me some personal 
obloquy. I will not go into the details which 
have flowed out so naturally from his tongue. 
I only brand them to his face as false. I say, 
also, to that Senator, and I wish him to bear it 
in mind, that no person with the upright form 
of man can be allowed — (Hesitation.) 

Mr. Douglas: — Say it. 

Mr. Sumner : — I will say it — no person with 
the upright form of man can be allowed, with- 
out violation to all decency, to switch out from 
his tongue the perpetual stench of offensive per- 
sonality. Sir, that is not a proper weapon of de- 
bate, at least, on this floor. The noisome, squat, 
and nameless animal, to which I now refer, is 
not a proper model for an American Senator. 
Will the Senator from Illinois take notice? 

Mr. Douglas : — I will ; and therefore will 
not imitate you, sir. 

Mr. Sumner:— I did not hear the Senator. 

Mr. Douglas: — I said if that be the case I 
wouldcertainly never imitate you in that capaci- 
ty, recognizing the force of the illustration. 

Mr. Sumner : — Mr. President, again the Sen- 
ator has switched his tongue, and again he fills 
the Senate with its offensive odor. * * * 

Mr. Douglas: — I am not going to pursue 



288 CHARLES SUMNER. 

this subject further. I will only say that a 
man who has been branded by me in the Sen- 
ate, and convicted by the Senate of falsehood, 
cannot use language requiring a reply, and 
therefore I have nothing more to say. 



PRESTON S. BROOKS, 

OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 
(born 1819, DIED 1857.) 



ON THE SUMNER ASSAULT ; HOUSE OF REPRESENTA- 
TIVES, JULY 14, 1856, 

Mr. Speaker : 

Some time since a Senator from Massachu- 
setts allowed himself, in an elaborately pre- 
pared speech, to offer a gross insult to my 
State, and to a venerable friend, who is my State 
representative, and who was absent at the 
time. 

Not content with that, he published to the 
world, and circulated extensively, this uncalled- 
for libel on my State and my blood. Whatever 
insults my State insults me. Her history and 
character have commanded my pious venera- 
tion ; and in her defence I hope I shall always 
be prepared, humbly and modestly, to perform 
the duty of a son. I should have forfeited my 
own self-respect, and perhaps the good opinion 
289 



290 PRESTON S. BROOKS. 

of my countrymen, if I had failed to resent 
such an injury by calHng the offender in ques- 
tion to a personal account. It was a personal 
affair, and in taking redress into my own hands 
I meant no disrespect to the Senate of the 
United States or to this House. Nor, sir, did 
I design insult or disrespect to the State of 
Massachusetts. I was aware of the personal 
responsibilities I incurred, and was willing to 
meet them. I knew, too, that I was amenable 
to the laws of the country, which afford the 
same protection to all, whether they be mem- 
bers of Congress or private citizens. 1 did not, 
and do not now believe, that I could be proper- 
ly punished, not only in a court of law, but 
here also, at the pleasure and discretion of the 
House. I did not then, and do not now, be- 
lieve that the spirit of American freemen would 
tolerate slander in high places, and permit a 
member of Congress to publish and circulate a 
libel on another, and then call upon either 
House to protect him against the personal re- 
sponsibilities which he had thus incurred. 

But if I had committed a breach of privilege, 
it was the privilege of the Senate, and not of 
this House, which was violated. I was answer- 
able there, and not here. They had no right, 



THE SUMNER ASSAULT. 29 1 

as it seems to me, to prosecute me in these 
Halls, nor have you the right in law or under 
the Constitution, as I respectfully submit, 
to take jurisdiction over offences committed 
against them. The Constitution does not 
justify them in making such a request, nor this 
House in granting it. If, unhappily, the day 
should ever come when sectional or party feel- 
ing should run so high as to control all other 
considerations of public duty or justice, how 
easy it will be to use such precedents for the 
excuse of arbitrary power, in either House, to 
expel members of the minority who may have 
rendered themselves obnoxious to the prevail- 
ing spirit in the House to which they belong. 

Matters may go smoothly enough when one 
House asks the other to punish a member who 
is offensive to a majority of its own body ; but 
how will it be when, upon a pretence of insulted 
dignity, demands are made of this House to ex- 
pel a member who happens to run counter to 
its party predilections, or other demands which 
it may not be so agreeable to grant ? It could 
never have been designed by the Constitution 
of the United States to expose the two Houses 
to such temptations to collision, or to extend 
so far the discretionary power which was given 



292 PRESTON S. BROOKS. 

to either House to punish its own members for 
the violation of its rules and orders. Discretion 
has been said to be the law of the tyrant, and 
when exercised under the color of the law, and 
under the influence of party dictation, it may 
and will become a terrible and insufferable 
despotism. 

This House, however, it would seem, from 
the unmistakable tendency of its proceedings, 
takes a different view from that which I 
deliberately entertain in common with many 
others. 

So far as public interests or constitutional 
rights are involved, I have now exhausted my 
means of defence. I may, then, be allowed to 
take a more personal view of the question at 
issue. The further prosecution of this subject, 
in the shape it has now assumed, may not only 
involve my friends, but the House itself, in 
agitations which might be unhappy in their 
consequences to the country. If these conse- 
quences could be confined to myself individu- 
ally, I think I am prepared and ready to meet 
them, here or elsewhere ; and when I use this 
language I mean what I say. But others must 
not suffer for me. I have felt more on account 
of my two friends who have been implicated. 



THE SUMNER ASSAULT. 293 

than for myself, for they have proven that 
" there is a friend that sticketh closer than 
a brother." I will not constrain gentlemen to 
assume a responsibility on my account, which 
possibly they would not run on their own. 

Sir, I cannot, on my own account, assume the 
responsibility, in the face of the American peo- 
ple, of commencing a line of conduct which in 
my heart of hearts I believe would result in 
subverting the foundations of this Government, 
and in drenching this Hall in blood. No act of 
mine, on my personal account, shall inaugurate 
revolution ; but when you, Mr. Speaker, return 
to your own home, and hear the people of the 
great North — and they are a great people — 
speak of me as a bad man, you will do me the 
justice to say that a blow struck by me at this 
time would be followed by revolution — and 
this I know. (Applause and hisses in the gal- 
lery.) 

Mr. Brooks (resuming) :^If I desired to kill 
the Senator, why did not I do it ? You all 
admit that I had him in my power. Let me 
tell the member from New Jersey that it was 
expressly to avoid taking life that I used an 
ordinary cane, presented to me by a friend in 
Baltimore, nearly three months before its appli- 



294 PRESTON S. BROOKS. 

cation to the " bare head " of the Massachusetts 
Senator. I went to work very dehberately, as 
I am charged — and this is admitted, — and specu- 
lated somewhat as to whether I should employ 
a horsewhip or a cowhide ; but knowing that 
the Senator was my superior in strength, it 
occurred to me that he might wrest it from my 
hand, and then — for I never attempt any thing 
I do not perform — I might have been com- 
pelled to do that which I would have regretted 
the balance of my natural life. 

The question has been asked in certain news- 
papers, why I did not invite the Senator to per- 
sonal combat in the mode usually adopted. 
Well, sir, as I desire the whole truth to be 
known about the matter, I will for once notice 
a newspaper article on the floor of the House, 
and answer here. 

My answer is, that the Senator would not 
accept a message ; and having formed the un- 
alterable determination to punish him, I be- 
lieved that the offence of "sending a hostile 
message," superadded to the indictment for 
assault and battery, would subject me to legal 
penalties more severe than would be imposed 
for a simple assault and battery. That is my 
answer. 



THE SUMNER ASSAULT. 295 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have nearly finished 
what I intended to say. If my opponents, who 
have pursued me with unparalleled bitterness, 
are satisfied with the present condition of this 
affair, I am. I return my thanks to my friends, 
and especially to those who are from non- 
slave-owning States, who have magnanimously 
sustained me, and felt that it was a higher 
honor to themselves to be just in their judg- 
ment of a gentleman than to be a member of 
Congress for life. In taking my leave, I feel 
that it is proper that I should say that I believe 
that some of the votes that have been cast 
against me have been extorted by an outside 
pressure at home, and that their votes do not 
express the feelings or opinions of the members 
who gave them. 

To such of these as have given their votes 
and made their speeches on the constitutional 
principles involved, and without indulging in 
personal vilification, I owe my respect. But, 
sir, they have written me down upon the his- 
tory of the country as worthy of expulsion, and 
in no unkindness I must tell them that for all 
future time my self-respect requires that I shall 
pass them as strangers. 

And now, Mr. Speaker, I announce to you 



296 PRESTON S. BROOKS. 

and to this House, that I am no longer a mem- 
ber of the Thirty-Fourth Congress. 

(Mr. Brooks then walked out of the House 
of Representatives.) 



ANSON BURLINGAME, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

(born 1822, DIED 1873.) 



IN DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS ; HOUSE OF REPRE- 
SENTATIVES, JUNE 21, 1856, 

Mr. Chairman: 

The House will bear me witness that I have 
not pressed myself upon its deliberations. I 
never before asked its indulgence. I have as- 
sailed no man ; nor have I sought to bring re- 
proach upon any man's State. But, while such 
has been my course, as well as the course of my 
colleagues from Massachusetts, upon this floor, 
certain members have seen fit to assail the 
State which we represent, not only with words, 
but with blows. 

In remembrance of these things, and seizing 

the first opportunity which has presented itself 

for a long time, I stand here to-day to say a 

word for old Massachusetts — not that she needs 

297 



298 ANSON BURLINGAME. ' 

it ; no, sir ; for in all that constitutes true great- 
ness — in all that gives abiding strength — in 
great qualities of head and of heart — in moral 
power — in material prosperity — in intellectual 
resources and physical ability — by the general 
judgment of mankind, according to her popu- 
lation, she is the first State. There does not 
live the man anywhere, who knows any thing, 
to whom praise of Massachusetts would not be 
needless. She is as far beyond that as she is 
beyond censure. Members here may sneer at 
her expense — they may praise her past at the 
expense of her present ; but I say, with a full 
conviction of its truth, that Massachusetts, in 
her present performances, is even greater than 
in her past recollections. And when I have 
said this, what more can I say ? 

Sir, although I am here as her youngest and 
humblest member, yet, as her Representative, 
I feel that I am the peer of any man upon this 
floor. Occupying that high stand-point, with 
modesty, but with firmness, I cast down her 
glove to the whole band of her assailants. 

She has been assailed in the House and out 
of the House, at the other end of the Capitol 
and at the other end of the avenue. There 
have been brought against her general charges 



DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 299 

and specific charges. I am sorry to find at the 
head of her assailants the President of the 
United States, who not only assails Massachu- 
setts but the whole North. * * * 

But, Mr. Chairman, all these assaults upon 
the State of Massachusetts sink into insignifi- 
cance, compared with the one I am about to 
mention. On the 19th of May, it was an- 
nounced that Mr. SUMNER would address the 
Senate upon the Kansas question. The floor 
of the Senate, the galleries, and avenues lead- 
ing thereto, were thronged with an expectant 
audience ; and many of us left our places in 
this House to hear the Massachusetts orator. 
To say that we were delighted with the speech 
we heard, would but faintly express the deep 
emotions of our hearts awakened by it. I need 
not speak of the classic purity of its language, 
nor of the nobility of its sentiments. It was 
heard by many ; it has been read by millions. 
There has been no such speech made in the 
Senate since the days when those Titans of 
American eloquence — the Websters and the 
Haynes — contended with each other for mas- 
tery. 

It was severe, because it was launched against 
tyranny. It was severe as Chatham was severe 



300 ANSON BURLINGAME. 

when he defended the feeble colonies against 
the giant oppression of the mother country. It 
was made in the face of a hostile Senate. It 
continued through the greater portion of two 
days ; and yet, during that time, the speaker 
was not once called to order. This fact is 
conclusive as to the personal and parliamentary 
decorum of the speech. He had provocation 
enough. His State had been called hypocritical. 
He himself had been called " a puppy," " a 
fool," "a fanatic," and "a dishonest man." Yet 
he was parliamentary from the beginning to the 
end of his speech. No man knew better than 
he did the proprieties of the place, for he had 
always observed them. No man knew better 
than he did parliamentary law, because he had 
made it the study of his life. No man saw 
more clearly than he did the flaming sword of 
the Constitution, turning every way, guarding 
all the avenues o^ the Senate. But he was not 
thinking of these things ; he was not thinking 
then of the privileges of the Senate nor of the 
guaranties of the Constitution ; he was there to 
denounce tyranny and crime, and he did it. He 
was there to speak for the rights of an empire, 
and he did it, bravely and grandly. 

So much for the occasion of the speech. A 



DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 3OI 

word, and I shall be pardoned, about the speaker 
himself. He is my friend ; for many and many 
a year I have looked to him for guidance and 
light, and I never looked in vain. He never 
had a personal enemy in his life ; his character 
is as pure as the snow that falls on his native 
hills ; his heart overflows with kindness for 
every being having the upright form of man ; 
he is a ripe scholar, a chivalric gentleman, and 
a warm-hearted, true friend. He sat at the feet 
of Channing, and drank in the sentiments of 
that noble soul. He bathed in the learning and 
undying love of the great jurist Story ; and the 
hand of Jackson, with its honors and its offices, 
sought him early in life, but he shrank from 
them with instinctive modesty. Sir, he is the 
pride of Massachusetts. His mother common- 
wealth found him adorning the highest walks of 
literature and law, and she bade him go and 
grace somewhat the rough character of political 
life. The people of Massachusetts — the old and 
the young and the middle-aged, now pay their 
full homage to the beauty of his public and 
private character. Such is Charles Sumner. 
On the 22d day of May, when the Senate and 
the House had clothed themselves in mourning 
for a brother fallen in the battle of life in the 



302 ANSON BURLINGAME. 

distant State of Missouri, the Senator from 
Massachusetts sat in the silence of the Senate 
chamber, engaged in the employments pertain- 
ing to his office, when a member from this 
House, who had taken an oath to sustain the 
Constitution, stole into the Senate, that place 
which had hitherto been held sacred against 
violence, and smote him as Cain smote his 
brother. 

Mr. Keitt (in his seat) : — That is false. 

Mr. Burlingame: — I will not bandy epi- 
thets with the gentleman. I am responsible 
for my own language. Doubtless he is respon- 
sible for his. 

Mr. Keitt :— I am. 

Mr. Burlingame: — I shall stand by mine. 
One blow was enough ; but it did not satiate 
the wrath of that spirit which had pursued him 
through two days. Again and again, quicker 
and faster fell the leaden blows, until he was 
torn away from his victim, when the Senator 
from Massachusetts fell in the arms of his 
friends, and his blood ran down on the Senate 
floor. Sir, the act was brief, and my comments 
on it shall be brief also. I denounce it in the 
name of the Constitution it violated. I de- 
nounce it in the name of the sovereignty of 



DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 303 

Massachusetts, which was stricken down by the 
blow. I denounce it in the name of humanity. 
I denounce it in the name of civiHzation which 
it outraged. I denounce it in the name of that 
fair-play which bullies and prize-fighters respect. 
What ! strike a man when he is pinioned — when 
he cannot respond to a blow? Call you that 
chivalry? In what code of honor did you get 
your authority for that ? I do not believe that 
member has a friend so dear who must not, in 
his heart of hearts, condemn the act. Even 
the member himself, if he has left a spark of 
that chivalry and gallantry attributed to him, 
must loathe and scorn the act. God knows I 
do not wish to speak unkindly, or in a spirit of 
revenge ; but I owe it to my manhood and the 
noble State I, in part, represent, to express my 
abhorrence of the act. But much as I repro- 
bate the act, much more do I reprobate the con- 
duct of those who were by, and saw the outrage 
perpetrated. Sir, especially do I notice the 
conduct of that Senator recently from the free 
platform of Massachusetts, with the odor of her 
hospitality on him, who stood there, not only 
silent and quiet while it was going on, but, 
when it was over, approved the act. And worse ; 
when he had time to cool, when he had slept 



304 ANSON BURLINGAME. 

on it, he went into the Senate chamber of the 
United States, and shocked the sensibihties of 
the world by approving it. Another Senator 
did not take part because he feared that his 
motives might be questioned, exhibiting as ex- 
traordinary a delicacy as that individual who 
refused to rescue a drowning mortal because he 
had not been introduced to him. Another was 
not on good terms ; and yet, if rumor be true, 
that Senator has declared that himself and 
family are more indebted to Mr. Sumner than 
to any other man ; yet, when he saw him borne 
bleeding by, he turned and went on the other 
side. Oh, magnanimous Slidell! Oh, pru- 
dent Douglas ! Oh, audacious Toombs ! 

Sir, there are questions arising out of this 
which far transcend those of a mere personal 
nature. Of those personal considerations I 
shall speak, when the question comes properly 
before us, if I am permitted to do so. The 
higher question involves the very existence of 
the Government itself. If, sir, freedom of 
speech is not to remain to us, what is all this 
Government worth? If we from Massachu- 
setts, or any other State — Senators, or members 
of the House — are to be called to account by 
some "gallant nephew" of some "gallant 



DEFENCE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 305 

uncle," when we utter something which does 
not suit their sensitive natures, we desire to 
know it. If the conflict is to be transferred 
from this peaceful, intellectual field to one 
where, it is said, " honors are easy and responsi- 
bilities equal," then we desire to know it. 
Massachusetts, if her sons and representatives 
are to have the rod held over them, if these 
things are to continue, the time may come — 
though she utters no threats — when she may 
be called upon to withdraw them to her own 
bosom, where she can furnish to them that pro- 
tection which is not vouchsafed to them under 
the flag of their common country. But, while 
she permits us to remain, we shall do our duty 
— our whole duty. We shall speak whatever 
we choose to speak, when we will, where we 
will, and how we will, regardless of all conse- 
quences. 

Sir, the sons of Massachusetts are educated at 
the knees of their mothers, in the doctrines of 
peace and good-will, and, God knows, they de- 
sire to cultivate those feelings — feelings of social 
kindness, and public kindness. The House will 
bear witness that we have not violated or tres- 
passed upon any of them ; but, sir, if we are 
pushed too long and too far, there are men 



306 ANSON BURLINGAME. 

from the old commonwealth of Massachusetts 
who will not shrink from a defence of freedom 
of speech, and the honored State they represent, 
on any field where they may be assailed. 



THOMAS L. CLINGMAN, 

OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
(born 1813.) 



ON DEBATES IN CONGRESS ; HOUSE OF REPRE- 
SENTATIVES, JULY 9, 1856. 

Mr. Speaker: 

If on the present occasion any gentleman 
desires to get into difficulty, and is gratified in 
his wishes, I hope we shall not have a great 
howl in any part of the country over it, I hope 
that it will be looked upon as a mere personal 
matter for the gratification of the gentlemen 
who engage in it. And as I am a peaceable man, 
and never like to get into difficulties, so I do 
not take much pains to get out of their way ; 
and as, during this hot weather, I feel very lan- 
guid and indisposed to exertion, I shall not 
take especial pains to get out of the way of any- 
body who may be in search of such a thing. 
While I do not intend to utter any thing to 
offend any gentleman who does not want to be of- 
307 



308 THOMAS L. CLINGMAN. 

fended, still, if any one upon this floor — I limit 
the remarks to members of the House, not ex- 
tending it to outsiders at all — wants a difficulty 
with me on this subject, I am perfectly willing 
for him to take it for granted that I have insulted 
him, and am responsible in any manner that he 
desires ; but if he does not desire it, then not for 
the world would I offend him. But if this is to be 
a matter of mere abuse and vituperation, I wash 
my hands of it ; I do not intend to embark in any 
thing of that kind. I regard fighting as objec- 
tionable in many respects, but quarrelling and de- 
nunciation are vastly more intolerable. When 
the British made war on China, the Chinese 
went into the field armed with gongs, and made 
a terrible noise, to induce the English, doubtless, 
to leave their territory. So if this is to be a 
mere Chinese gong business — an effort, in other 
words, to see who can make the loudest and 
most disagreeable noise, I will keep clear of it, 
and, if necessary, put my fingers in my ears to 
escape its annoyance. 

And now let me call the attention of the 
House to the case under consideration. As I 
have already said, it is one which has produced 
a very great and remarkable excitement in the 
country. This, Mr. Speaker, may well be a 



DEBATES IN CONGRESS. 309 

matter of surprise to me ; for though I have 
not been here a great many years as a member, 
yet about a dozen collisions on the floors of the 
two Houses have occurred in my time, and 
they were much stronger cases than this, be- 
cause they took place while the Houses were in 
session. Why, I recollect that, during my first 
Congress, Mr. White of Kentucky and Mr. 
Rathbun of New York had a set-to just near 
where I now stand, during a period of great ex- 
citement, and when politics ran very high, with 
reference to a personally offensive charge against 
Mr. Clay ; but the House never adopted any 
proceedings against those members, and it made 
no noise in the country. I recollect, too, that, 
in the next Congress, a gentleman from Georgia 
and another from Tennessee had a struggle over 
on the other side of the chamber, and several 
large desks were overturned, and the gentlemen 
apologized for disturbing our deliberations ; but 
the House did not raise any committee, or 
censure them in any wise. Also, toward the 
close of that session, whilst the House was in 
session, at a late hour in the night, during a sort 
of triangular fight, a gentleman from Alabama 
struck a gentleman from the Northwest over 
the head with a cane, and cut it so that it bled 



3iO THOMAS L. CLINGMAN. 

very freely ; but this did not cause the raising 
of any committee, or any other proceeding 
against the parties. I remember, too, going in- 
to the Senate that night, near one or two 
o'clock — and I must say here, that these disturb- 
ances occur mofe frequently during the last 
night of the session, when gentlemen, having 
been up for two or three days and nights succes- 
sively, have gotten sleepy, and those who are 
in the habit of drinking spirits, drink a little 
from patriotic motives, just to keep awake, so 
as to be able to attend to the public business. 

But, as I was saying, I went into the Senate 
chamber that night, and a Senator asked me 
what we had been doing in the House? I re- 
plied that we had just had a little fight there 
among three of the members. " Why," said he, 
with an air of exultation, "we have had two in 
the Senate to-night ! " and it was true. It was 
on that occasion that a Senator from Pennsyl- 
vania was standing up making a speech, and a 
Senator from Mississippi, not liking his speech, 
went up and struck him in the face, or attempt- 
ted so to strike him, and they had a regular set- 
to. The Senate, however, did not raise any 
committee to take charge of the subject. 

During the next Congress two members from 



DEBATES IN CONGRESS. 311 

North Carolina had a collision just behind 
where I am standing, but really no notice was 
taken of it, except a little knocking on the 
Speaker's desk, and a request on his part that 
members would resume their seats and keep 
order. 

A Voice : — Who where the members ? 

Mr. Clingman : — I do not give the names of 
the parties in any of these cases, because, if I 
did, I might have to refer to gentlemen who are 
now upon the floor, and thereby render it 
necessary for them to make explanations, and 
thus divert the attention of the House from the 
present case. 

Sir, I recollect also that during the Congress 
of 1852, two gentlemen from Mississippi had a 
fight over the way ; they were rather stout gen- 
tlemen, and made quite a " muss," as they say 
in New York, but nobody talked then of raising 
a committee. Why, even during the last Con- 
gress, I think A\^e had two difficulties of this 
sort. A gentleman from Maine had a fight 
with some gentleman from the West, but it all 
ended without any action, or even notice, on 
the part of the House. On another occasion 
two gentlemen from Tennessee had a violent 
altercation, and one of them jumped over sev- 



312 THOMAS L. CLINGMAN. 

eral desks, and the other pulled out a pistol, 
or, at any rate a pistol fell upon the floor near 
him ; but no steps were taken against them. 
And it is a little remarkable that the gentleman 
who jumped over the desks was a candidate for 
an office in this House at the beginning of this 
session, and was elected on the first ballot by a 
very large vote. If you look at that vote, I ex- 
pect you will find that every single gentleman 
who voted for the raising of this committee 
actually voted* for him. Now, that shows you 
what was thought of assaults and batteries here 
on the floor. There is no doubt that this was an 
interruption of the business of the House — that 
it was a breach of privilege ; and yet a large 
majority of the present House, including all 
those, I think, who sustain the action against 
Mr. Brooks, attached so little weight to it, that, 
when they had the whole United States to pick 
from, they selected that very gentleman to 
make a Clerk of the House of. 

There have also been several duels, without 
anybody being punished for them. It is true 
that, when the Cilley duel occurred, owing to 
the fact that there was a great deal of political 
excitement at the time, and that it was sup- 
posed that Mr. Clay was connected with it, and 



DEBATES IN CONGRESS. 313 

some capital could be made against him and his 
party, the House did get up a committee, and 
had debates ; but the matter was laid on the 
table, and instead, a very foolish law was passed 
on the subject of duelling. During the first 
Congress that I was here, a duel occurred be- 
tween a member from Alabama and a member 
from North Carolina. A member from New 
York (Preston King) did then introduce a reso- 
lution ; but, after a little debate, the House re- 
jected it by laying it on the table. The last 
duel occurred in 185 1, between a gentleman 
from Alabama and one from my own State, and 
the House took no notice of it at all. 

Then, as to outside difificulties, such as this 
one which the gentleman from Ohio has now 
brought before us in the present case, we have 
had almost innumerable cases of them. During 
the Congress before the last, while the House 
was in session, and just by the door of the post- 
office, a member from New York beat the 
Postmaster-General, or some other member of 
the Cabinet, and nobody took any notice of it. 
Why, there was a man shot in the door of this 
hall some years ago, while there was a fight 
going on between two m'embers in the House, 
but no one was punished for it. A friend 



V. 

THE ANTI-SLAVERY STRUGGLE. 

(continued from volume IV.'; 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

OF ILLINOIS. 

(born 1809, DIED 1865.) 



ON HIS NOMINATION TO THE UNITED STATES SEN- 
ATE, AT THE REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION, 
SPRINGFIELD, ILLS., JUNE 17, 1858. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 

Convention : 

If we could first know where we are, and 
whither we are tending, we could better judge 
what to do, and how to do it. We are now 
far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated 
with the avowed object, and confident promise, 
of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under 
the operation of that policy, that agitation not 
only has not ceased, but has constantly aug- 
mented. In my opinion, it will not cease until 
a crisis shall have been reached and passed. " A 
house divided against itself cannot stand." I 
believe this Government cannot endure perma- 
nently half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
3 



4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

pect the Union to be dissolved ; I do not expect 
the house to fall ; but I do expect that it will 
cease to be divided. It will become all one 
thing, or all the other. Either the opponents 
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
and place it where the public mind shall rest in 
the belief that it is in the course of ultimate ex- 
tinction ; or its advocates will push it forward till 
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old 
and new, North as well as South. Have we no 
tendency to the latter condition ? Let anyone 
who doubts carefully contemplate that now 
almost complete legal combination-piece of ma- 
chinery, so to speak — compounded of the Ne- 
braska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. 
Let him consider not only what work the ma- 
chinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, 
but also let him study the history of its con- 
struction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if 
he can, to trace the evidences of design and con- 
cert of action among its chief architects from 
the beginning. 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded 
from more than half the States by State con- 
stitutions, and from most of the national terri- 
tory by Congressional prohibition. Four days 
later commenced the struggle which ended in 



ON HIS NOMINA TION. J 

repealing that Congressional prohibition. This 
opened all the national territory to slavery, and 
was the first point gained. But, so far. Con- 
gress only had acted, and an indorsement, by 
the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, 
to save the point already gained and gwQ 
chance for more. This necessity had not been 
overlooked, but had been provided for, as well 
as might be, in the notable argument of " squat- 
ter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred 
right of self-government "; — which latter phrase 
though expressive of the only rightful basis of 
any government, was so perverted in this 
attempted use of it as to amount, to just this: 
That, if any one man choose to enslave another, 
no third TCi2iX\. shall be allowed to object. That 
argument was incorporated with the Nebraska 
bill itself, in the language which follows : " It 
being the true intent and meaning of this act, 
not to legislate slavery into any Territory or 
State, nor to exclude it therefrom ; but to leave 
the people thereof perfectly free to form and 
regulate their domestic institutions in their own 
way, subject only to the Constitution of the 
United States." Then opened the roar of 
loose declamation in favor of " squatter sover- 
eignty," and " sacred right of self-govern- 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

ment." " But," said opposition members, "let 
us amend the bill so as to expressly declare 
that the people of the Territory may exclude 
slavery." '' Not we," said the friends of the 
measure ; and down they voted the amend- 
ment. 

While the Nebraska bill was passing through 
Congress, a law-case, involving the question of 
a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having 
voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and 
then into a Territory covered by the Congres- 
sional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a 
long time in each,was passing through theUnited 
States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri ; 
and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were 
brought to a decision in the same month of 
May, 1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, 
which name now designates the decision finally 
made in the case. Before the then next Presi- 
dential election, the law-case came to, and was 
argued in, the Supreme Court of the United 
States ; but the decision of it was deferred un- 
til after the election. Still, before the election. 
Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, 
requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska 
bill to state his opinion whether the people of 
a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery 



ON HIS NOMINA TION. J 

from their limits ; and the latter answers : "That 
is a question for the Supreme Court." 

The election came, Mr. Buchanan was elected, 
and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. 
That was the second point gained. * * * 
The Supreme Court met again, did not 
announce their decision, but ordered a re-argu- 
ment. The Presidential inauguration came, 
and still no decision of the court ; but the in- 
coming President, in his inaugural address, fer- 
vently exhorted the people to abide by the forth- 
coming decision, whatever it might be. Then, 
in a few days, came the decision. The reputed 
author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occa- 
sion to make a speech at this capital, indorsing 
the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently de- 
nouncing all opposition to it. The new President, 
too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman 
letter to indorse and strongly construe that de- 
cision, and to express his astonishment that any 
different view had ever been entertained. 

At length a squabble springs up between the 
President and the author of the Nebraska bill, 
on the mere question of fact, whether the 
Lecompton constitution was, or was not, in any 
just sense, made by the people of Kansas ; and 
jn that quarrel the latter declares that all he 



8 * ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he 
cares not whether slavery be voted dowtt or 
voted up. I do not understand his declaration, 
that he cares not whether slavery be voted 
down or voted up, to be intended by him other 
than as an apt definition of the policy he would 
impress upon the public mind — the principle 
for which he declares he has suffered so much, 
and is ready to suffer to the end. And well 
may he cling to that principle. If he has any 
parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That 
principle is the only shred left of his original 
Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott de- 
cision, squatter sovereignty squatted out of 
existence — tumbled down like temporary scaf- 
folding — like the mould at the foundry, served 
through one blast, and fell back into loose 
sand, — helped to carry an election, and then 
was kicked to the winds. * * * 

The several points of the Dred Scot decision, 
in connection with Senator Douglas' " care- 
not " policy, constitute the piece of machinery 
in its present state of advancement. This was 
the third point gained. The working points of 
that machinery are: (i) That no negro slave, 
imported as such from Africa, and no descend- 
ant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any 



ON HIS NOMINA TION. g 

State, in the sense of that term as used in the 
Constitution of the United States. This point 
is made in order to deprive the negro, in every 
possible event, of the benefit of that provision 
of the United States Constitution, which de- 
clares that " the citizens of each State shall be 
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citi- 
zens in the several States." (2) That, " subject 
to the Constitution of the United States," 
neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature 
can exclude slavery from any United States 
Territory. This point is made in order that 
individual men may fill up the Territories with 
slaves, without danger of losing them as prop- 
erty, and thus to enhance the chances of per- 
manency to the institution through all the 
future. (3) That whether the holding a negro 
in actual slavery in a free State makes him free, 
as against the holder, the United States courts 
will not decide, but will leave to be decided by 
the courts of any slave State the negro may be 
forced into by the master. This point is made, 
not to be pressed immediately; but, if acqui- 
esced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by 
the people at an election, then to sustain the 
logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's mas- 
ter might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the 



lO ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

State of Illinois, every other master may law- 
fully do with any other one or one thousand 
slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State. 

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in 
hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is 
left of it, is to educate and mould public opin- 
ion, at least Northern public opinion, not to 
care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. 
This shows exactly where we now are, and 
partially, also, whither we are tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter to 
go back, and run the mind over the string 
of historical facts already stated. Several 
things will now appear less dark and mysteri- 
ous than they did when they were transpiring. 
The people were to be left "perfectly free." 
" subject only to the Constitution." What the 
Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could 
not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an 
exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision 
to come in afterward, and declare the perfect 
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at 
all. * * * Why was the court decision held 
up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion 
withheld till after the Presidential election? 
Plainly enough now : the speaking out then 
would have damaged the perfectly free argu- 



ON HIS NOMINA TION. 1 1 

ment upon which the election was to be carried. 
Why the outgoing President's felicitation on 
the indorsement ? Why the delay of a re-argu- 
ment ? Why the incoming President's advance 
exhortation in favor of the decision ? These 
things look like the cautious patting and petting 
of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, 
when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a 
fall. * * * 

We cannot absolutely know that all these 
exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. 
But when we see a lot of framed timbers, differ- 
ent portions of which we know have been got- 
ten out at different times and places, and by 
different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger, 
and James, for instance, — and when we see these 
timbers joined together, and see that they ex- 
actly make the frame of a house or a mill, all 
the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all 
the lengths and proportions of the different 
pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, 
and not a piece too many or too few — not 
omitting even scaffolding, — or, if a single piece 
be lacking, we see the place in the frame exact- 
ly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in, 
— in such a case, we find it impossible not to 
believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger 



l2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

and James all understood one another from the 
beginning, and all worked upon a common plan 
or draft drawn up before the first blow was 
struck. 

It should not be overlooked that, by the 
Nebraska bill, the people of a State, as 
well as Territory, were to be left " perfectly 
free," "subject only to the Constitution." 
Why mention a State ? They were legislating 
for Territories, and not for or about States. 
Certainly, the people of a State are and ought 
to be subject to the Constitution of the United 
States ; but why is mention of this lugged into 
this merely Territorial law ? Why are the peo- 
ple of a Territory and the people of a State 
therein lumped together, and their relation to 
the Constitution therein treated as being pre- 
cisely the same ? While the opinion of the 
court, by Chief-Justice Taney, in the Dred 
Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the 
concurring judges, expressly declare that the 
Constitution of the United States permits 
neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to 
exclude slavery from any United States Terri- 
tory, they all omit to declare whether or not 
the same Constitution permits a-State, or the 
people of a State, to exclude it. Possibly, this 



ON HIS NOMINATION. 1 3 

is a mere omission. * * * The nearest ap- 
proach to the point of declaring the power of a 
State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. 
He approaches it more than once, using the 
precise idea, and almost the language, too, of 
the Nebraska act. On one occasion, his exact 
language is : " Except in cases when the power is 
restrained by the Constitution of the United 
States, the law of the State is supreme over the 
subjects of slavery within its jurisdiction." In 
what cases the power of the States is so re- 
strained by the United States Constitution is 
left an open question, precisely as the same 
question, as to the restraint on the power of the 
Territories, was left open in the Nebraska act. 
Put this and that together, and we have another 
nice little niche, which we may, erelong, see 
filled with another Supreme Court decision, de- 
claring that the Constitution of the United 
States does not permit a State to exclude slav- 
ery from its limits. And this may especially 
be expected if the doctrine of " care not wheth- 
er slavery be voted down or voted up," shall 
gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give 
promise that such a decision can be maintained 
when made. 

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

being alike lawful in all the States. Welconne 
or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, 
and will soon be upon us, unless the power of 
the present political dynasty, shall be met and 
overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly 
dreaming that the people of Missouri are on 
the verge of making their State free, and we 
shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Su- 
preme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To 
meet and overthrow that dynasty is the work 
before all those who would prevent that con- 
summation. That is what we have to do. How 
can we best do it ? 

There are those who denounce us openly to 
their own friends, and yet whisper us softly 
that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument 
there is with which to effect that object. They 
wish us to infer all, from the fact that he now 
has a little quarrel with the present head of the 
dynasty ; and that he has regularly voted with 
us on a single point, upon which he and we 
have never differed. They remind us that he 
is a great man, and that the largest of us are 
very small ones. Let this be granted. " But a 
living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge 
Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at 
least a caged and toothless one. How can he 



ON HIS NOMINATION. 1 5 

oppose the advances of slavery ? He don't care 
any thing about it. His avowed mission is im- 
pressing the " public heart " to care nothing 
about it. * * * Senator Douglas holds, we 
know, that a man may rightfully be wiser tO-day 
than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully 
change when he finds himself wrong. But can 
we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he 
will make any particular change, of which he 
himself has given no intimation ? Can we safely 
base our action upon any such vague inference? 
Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge 
Douglas' position, question his motives, or do 
aught that can be personally offensive to him. 
Whenever, if ever, he and we can come togeth- 
er on principle, so that our cause may have as- 
sistance from his great ability, I hope to have in- 
terposed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, 
he is not now with us — he does not pretend to 
be, he does not promise ever to be. 

Our cause, then, must be entrusted to, and 
conducted by its own undoubted friends — those 
whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the 
work — who do care for the result. Two years 
ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over 
thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did 
this under the single impulse of resistance to a 



t6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

common danger. With every external circum- 
stance against us, of strange, discordant, and 
even hostile elements, we gathered from the 
four winds, and formed and fought the battle 
through, under the constant hot fire of a disci- 
plined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we 
brave all then, to falter now ? — now, when that 
same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and bel- 
ligerent ? The result is not doubtful. We shall 
not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. 
Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay 
it ; but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to 
come. 



STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS, 

OF ILLINOIS. 

(born 1813, DIED 1861.) 



IN REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN ; FREEPORT, ILLS., 
AUGUST 27, 1858. 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I am. glad that at last I have brought Mr. 
Lincoln to the conclusion that he had better 
define his position on certain political questions 
to which I called his attention at Ottawa. * * * 
In a few moments I will proceed to review the 
answers which he has given to these interroga- 
tories ; but, in order to relieve his anxiety, I 
will first respond to those which he has pre- 
sented to me. Mark you, he has not presented 
interrogatories which have ever received the 
sanction of the party with which I am acting, 
and hence he has no other foundation for them 
than his own curiosity. 

First he desires to know, if the people of 
Kansas shall form a constitution by means en- 
17 



l8 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

tirely proper and unobjectionable, and ask ad- 
mission as a State, before they have the requi- 
site population for a member of Congress, 
whether I will vote for that admission. Well, 
now, I regret exceedingly that he did not 
answer that interrogatory himself before he put 
it to me, in order that we might understand, 
and not be left to infer, on which side he is. 
Mr. Trumbull, during the last session of Con- 
gress, voted from the beginning to the end 
against the admission of Oregon, although a 
free State, because she had not the requisite 
population for a member of Congress. Mr. 
Trumbull would not consent, under any circum- 
stances, to let a State, free or slave, come into 
the Union until it had the requisite population. 
As Mr. Trumbull is in the field fighting for Mr. 
Lincoln, I would like to have Mr. Lincoln 
answer his own question and tell me whether 
he is fighting Trumbull on that issue or not. 
But I will answer his question. * * * Either 
Kansas must come in as a free State, with what- 
ever population she may have, or the rule must 
be applied to all the other Territories alike. I 
therefore answer at once that, it having been 
decided that Kansas has people enough for a 
slave State, I hold that she has enough for a 



REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN. 1 9 

free State. I hope Mr. Lincoln is satisfied with 
my answer; and now I would like to get his 
answer to his own interrogatory — whether or 
not he will vote to admit Kansas before she has 
the requisite population. I want to know 
whether he will vote to admit Oregon before 
that Territory has the requisite population. 
Mr. Trumbull will not, and the same reason 
that commits Mr. Trumbull against the admis- 
sion of Oregon commits him against Kansas, 
even if she should apply for admission as a free 
State. If there is any sincerity, any truth, in 
the argument of Mr. Trumbull in the Senate 
against the admission of Oregon, because she 
had not 93,420 people, although her population 
was larger than that of Kansas, he stands 
pledged against the admission of both Oregon 
and Kansas until they have 93,420 inhabitants. 
I would like Mr. Lincoln to answer this question. 
I would like him to take his own medicine. If 
he differs with Mr. Trumbull, let him answer 
his argument against the admission of Oregon, 
instead of poking questions at me. 

The next question propounded to me by Mr. 
Lincoln is, Can the people of the Territory in 
any lawful way, against the wishes of any citi- 
zen of the United States, exclude slavery from 



20 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

their limits prior to the formation of a State 
Constitution ? I answer emphatically, as Mr. 
Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times 
from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion 
the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, 
exclude slavery from their limits prior to the 
formation of a State Constitution. Mr. Lincoln 
knew that I had answered that question over 
and over again. He heard me argue the Ne- 
braska bill on that principle all over the State 
in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856; and he has no 
excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my 
position on that question. It matters not what 
way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide 
as to the abstract question whether slavery may 
or may not go into a Territory under the Consti- 
tution ; the people have the lawful means to in- 
troduce it or exclude it as they please, for the 
reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an 
hour anywhere unless it is supported by local 
police regulations. Those police regulations 
can only be established by the local Legislature ; 
and, if the people are opposed to slavery, they 
will elect representatives to that body who will 
by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the 
introduction of it into their midst. If, on the 
contrary, they are for it, their legislation will 



REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN. 21 

favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the 
decision of the Supreme Court may be on that 
abstract question, still the right of the people 
to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is 
perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill. 
I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfac- 
tory on that point. 

In this connection, I will notice the charge 
which he has introduced in relation to Mr. 
Chase's amendment. I thought that I had chased 
that amendment out of Mr. Lincoln's brain at 
Ottawa ; but it seems that it still haunts his im- 
agination, and that he is not yet satisfied. I had 
supposed that he would be ashamed to press 
that question further. He is a lawyer, and has 
been a member of Congress, and has occu- 
pied his time and amused you by telling you 
about parliamentary proceedings. He ought to 
have known better than to try to palm off his 
miserable impositions upon this intelligent 
audience. The Nebraska bill provided that the 
legislative power and authority of the said Ter- 
ritory should extend to all rightful subjects of 
legislation, consistent with the organic act and 
the Constitution of the United States. It 
did not make any exception as to slavery, 
but gave all the power that it was possible 



22 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

for Congress to give, without violating the 
Constitution, to the Territorial Legislature, with 
no exception or limitation on the subject of 
slavery at all. The language of that bill, which 
I have quoted, gave the full power and the fuller 
authority over the subject of slavery, affirma- 
tively and negatively, to introduce it or exclude 
it, so far as the Constitution of the United States 
would permit. What more could Mr. Chase 
give by his amendment? Nothing! He offered 
his amendment for the identical purpose for 
which Mr. Lincoln is using it, to enable dema- 
gogues in the country to try and deceive the peo- 
ple. His amendment was to this effect. It 
provided that the Legislature should have power 
to exclude slavery ; and General Cass suggested: 
" Why not give the power to introduce as well as 
to exclude? " The answer was — they have the 
power already in the bill to do both. Chase 
was afraid his amendment would be adopted if 
he put the alternative proposition, and so made 
it fair both ways, and would not yield. He of- 
fered it for the purpose of having it rejected. 
He offered it, as he has himself avowed over 
and over again, simply to make capital out of 
it for the stump. He expected that it would 
be capital for small politicians in the coun- 



REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN. 23 

try, and that they would make an effort to 
deceive the people with it ; and he was not mis- 
taken, for Lincoln is carrying out the plan 
admirably. * * * 

The third question which Mr. Lincoln pre- 
sented is — If the Supreme Court of the United 
States shall decide that a State of this Union 
cannot exclude slavery from its own limits, will 
I submit to it ? I am amazed that Mr. Lincoln 
should ask such a question. Mr. Lincoln's ob- 
ject is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme 
Court. He knows that there never was but one 
man in America, claiming any degree of intelli- 
gence or decency, who ever for a moment pre- 
tended such a thing. It is true that the Wash- 
ington Union, in an article published on the 17th 
of last December, did put forth that doctrine, 
and I denounced the article on the floor of the 
Senate. * * * Lincoln's friends, Trumbull, 
and Seward, and Hale, and Wilson, and the 
whole Black Republican side of the Senate were 
silent. They left it to me to denounce it. And 
what was the reply made to me on that occasion ? 
Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and undertook 
to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to 
have deemed the article worthy of notice, and 
ought not to have replied to it ; that there was 



24 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

not one man, woman, or child south of the Poto- 
mac, in any slave State, who did not repudiate 
any such pretension. Mr. Lincoln knows that 
reply was made on the spot, and yet now he 
asks this question ! He might as well ask me — 
Suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a horse, 
would I sanction it ; and it would be as genteel 
in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, 
what ought to be done with him. He casts an 
imputation upon the Supreme Court of the 
United States, by supposing that they would 
violate the Constitution of the United States. 
I tell him that such a thing is not possible. It 
would be an act of moral treason that no man 
on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lin- 
coln himself would never, in his partisan feel- 
ings, so far forget what was right as to be guilty 
of such an act. 

The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is — Are 
you in favor of acquiring additional territory in 
disregard as to how such acquisition may affect 
the Union on the slavery question ? This ques- 
tion is very ingeniously and cunningly put. 
The Black Republican crowd lays it down ex- 
pressly that under no circumstances shall we 
acquire any more territory unless slavery is first 
prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln 



REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN. 2$ 

whether he is in favor of that proposition ? Are 
you opposed to the acquisition of any more 
territory, under any circumstances, unless 
slavery is prohibited in it ? That he does not 
like to answer. When I ask him whether he 
stands up to that article in the platform of his 
party, he turns, Yankee fashion, and, without 
answering it, asks me whether I am in favor of 
acquiring territory without regard to how it 
may affect the Union on the slavery question. 
I answer that, whenever it becomes necessary, 
in our growth and progress, to acquire more 
territory, I a7;i in favor of it without reference 
to the question of slavery, and when we have 
acquired it, I will leave the people tree to do as 
they please, either to make it slave or free 
territory, as they prefer. It is idle to tell me or 
you that we have territory enough. * ^ * 
With our natural increase, growing with a 
rapidity unknown in any other part of the globe, 
with the tide of emigration that is ileeing from 
despotism in the old world to seek refuge in our 
own, there is a constant torrent pouring into 
this country that requires more land, more ter- 
ritory upon which to settle ; and just as fast as 
our interest and our destiny require additional 
territory in the North, in the South, or in the 



26 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

islands of the ocean, I am for it, and, when we 
acquire it, will leave the people, according to the 
Nebraska bill, free to do as they please on the 
subject of slavery and every other question. 

I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem him- 
self answered on his four points. He racked his 
brain so much in devising these four questions 
that he exhausted himself, and had not strength 
enough to invent the others. As soon as he is 
able to hold a council with his advisers. Love- 
joy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglas, he will 
frame and propound others (" Good," ''good !"). 
You Black Republicans who say " good," I 
have no doubt, think that they are all good 
men. I have reason to recollect that some peo- 
ple in this country think that Fred Douglas is a 
very good man. The last time I came here to 
make a speech, while talking from a stand to 
you, people of Freeport, as I am doing to-day, 
I saw a carriage, and a magnificent one it was, 
drive up and take a position on the outside of 
the crowd ; a beautiful young lady was sitting 
on the box seat, whilst Fred Douglas and her 
mother reclined inside, and the owner of the 
carriage acted as driver. I saw this in your 
own town. (' ' What of it ? ") All I have to say 
of it is this, that if you Black Republicans 



REPLY TO MR. LINCOLN. 2/ 

think that the negro ought to be on a social 
equality with your wives and daughters, and 
ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you 
drive the team, you have a perfect right to do 
so. I am told that one of Fred Douglas' kins- 
men, another rich black negro, is now travelling 
in this part of the State making speeches for 
his friend Lincoln as the champion of black 
men. (" What have you to say against it ? ") 
All I have to say on that subject is, that those 
of you who believe that the negro is your 
equal, and ought to be on an equality with you 
socially, politically, and legally, have a right to 
entertain those opinions, and of course will vote 
for Mr. Lincoln. 



JOHN CABELL BRECKENRIDGE. 

OF KENTUCKY. 

(born 182I, DIED 1875.) 



ON THE DRED SCOTT DECISION, BEFORE THE KEN- 
TUCKY LEGISLATURE, DECEMBER, 1859. 

The election took place on Monday. The 
day before I received a letter signed by a num- 
ber of gentlemen in the Legislature asking my 
opinion in reference to the Dred Scott decision, 
in reference to Territorial sovereignty and the 
power of Congress to protect the property of 
citizens within the Territories. I received that 
letter with profound respect, and only regret 
that it did not come to my hands in time, that 
I might answer it before the election. * * * 
' Gentlemen, I bow to the decision of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States upon every 
question within its proper jurisdiction, whether 
it corresponds with my private opinion or not ; 
only, I bow a trifle lower when it happens to do 
so, as the decision in this Dred Scott case does. 
28 



THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 29 

I approve it in all its parts as a sound exposi- 
tion of the law and constitutional rights of the 
States, and citizens that inhabit them. 

* * * I was in the Congress of the United 
States when that Missouri line was repealed. I 
never would have voted for any bill organizing 
the Territory of Kansas as long as that odious 
stigma upon our institutions remained upon the 
statute book. I voted cheerfully for its repeal, 
and in doing that I cast no reflection upon the 
wise patriots who acquiesced in it at the time it 
was established. It was repealed, and we 
passed the act known as the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill. The Abolition, or giiasi Abolition, party 
of the United States were constantly contend- 
ing that it was the right of Congress to prohibit 
slavery in the common Territories of the Union. 
The Democratic party, aided by most of the 
gentlemen from the South, took the opposite 
view of the case. Our object was, if possible, 
to withdraw that question from the halls of 
Congress, and place it where it could no longer 
risk the public welfare and the public in- 
terest. * * * There was a point upon which 
we could not agree. A considerable portion of 
the Northern Democracy held that slavery was 
in derogation of common right, and could only 



30 JOHN CABELL BRECKENRIDGE. 

exist by force of positive law. They contended 
that the Constitution did not furnish that law, 
and that the slave-holder could not go into the 
Territories with his slaves with the Constitution 
to authorize him in holding his slaves as prop- 
erty, or to protect him. The South generally, 
without distinction of party, held the opposite 
view. They held that the citizens of all the 
States may go with whatever was recognized 
by the Constitution as property, and enjoy it. 
That did not seem to be denied to any article 
of property except slaves. Accordingly, the 
bill contained the provision that any question 
in reference to slavery should be referred to the 
courts of the United States, and the under- 
standing was that, whatever the judicial decision 
should be, it would be binding upon all parties, 
not only by virtue of the agreement, but under 
the obligation of the citizen, to respect the au- 
thority of the legally constituted courts of the 
country. * * * We had confidence in our 
own view of our rights. Our Northern friends 
had their views. It was a paradoxical question, 
and we gave it to the courts. 

Well, the courts did decide the very ques- 
tion which had been submitted to them, 
not upon a case from Kansas, but in another 



THE DRED SCOTT DECISION. 31 

case. * * -s*- The view that we in the South- 
ern States took of it was sustained — that in the 
Territories, the common property of the Union, 
pending their Territorial condition, neither Con- 
gress nor the Territorial Government had the 
power to confiscate any description of property 
recognized in the States of the Union. The 
court drew no distinction between slaves and 
other property. It is true some foreign philan- 
thropists and some foreign writers do under- 
take to draw this distinction, but these distinc- 
tions have nothing to do with our system of 
government. Our government rests not upon 
the speculations of philanthropic writers, bnt 
upon the plain understanding of a written Con- 
stitution which determines it, and upon that 
alone. It is the result of positive law ; there- 
fore we are not to look to the analogy of the 
supposed law of nations, but to regard the Con- 
stitution itself, which is the written expression 
of the respective powers of the Government 
and the rights of the States. 

Well, that being the case, and it having been 
authoritatively determined by the very tribunal 
to which it was referred, that Congress had no 
power to exclude slavery from the Territories, 
and judicially determined that the Territorial 



32 JOHN CABELL BRECKENRIDGE. 

Legislatures, authorities created by Congress, 
had not the power to exclude or confiscate 
slave property, I confess that I had ngt antici- 
pated that the doctrine of " unfriendly legisla- 
tion " would be set up. Hence I need not say 
to you that I do not believe in the doctrine of 
unfriendly legislation ; that I do not believe in 
the authority of the Territorial Legislatures to 
do by indirection what they cannot do directly. 
I repose upon the decision of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, as to the point 
that neither Congress nor the Territorial Legisla- 
ture has the right to obstruct or confiscate the 
property of any citizen, slaves included, pend- 
ing the Territorial condition. I do not see any 
escape from that decision, if you admit that 
the question was a judicial one; if you admit 
the decision of the Supreme Court ; and if you 
stand by the decision of the highest court of 
the country. The Supreme Court seems to 
hav.e recognized it as the duty — as the duty — of 
the courts of this Union in their proper sphere 
to execute this constitutional right, thus adju- 
dicated by the Supreme Court, in the following 
language ; * * * " The judicial department 
is also bound * * '^ to maintain in the 
Territory * * * the political rights and rights 



\ 



THE DRED SCOTT DECISION. 33 

of property of individual citizens as secured by 
the Constitution." So that, in regard to slave 
property, as in regard to any other property 
recognized and guarded by the Constitution, it 
is the duty, according to the Supreme Court, 
of all the courts of the country to protect and 
guard it by their decisions, whenever the ques- 
tion is brought before them. To which I will 
only add this — that the judicial decisions in our 
favor must be maintained — these judicial de- 
cisions in our favor must be sustained. 



WM. H. SEWARD, 

OF NEW YORK. 
(born i8oi, died 1872.) 



ON THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT ; ROCHESTER, 
OCTOBER 25, 1858. 

The unmistakable outbreaks of zeal which 
occur all around me, show that you are earnest 
men — and such a man am I. Let us therefore, 
at least for a time, pass all secondary and col- 
lateral questions, whether of a personal or of a 
general nature, and consider the main subject of 
the present canvass. The Democratic party, or, 
to speak more accurately, the party which wears 
that attractive name — is in possession of the- 
Federal Government. The Republicans pro- 
pose to dislodge that party, and dismiss it from 
its high trust. 

The main subject, then, is, whether the Dem- 
ocratic party deserves to retain the confidence 
of the American people. In attempting to 
prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actu- 
34 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 35 

ated by prejudices against that party, or by pre- 
possessions in favor of its adversary ; for I have 
learned, by some experience, that virtue and 
patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all 
parties, and that they differ less in their motives 
than in the policies they pursue. 

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in 
full operation, two radically different political 
systems; the one resting on the basis of servile 
or slave labor, the other on voluntary labor 
of freemen. The laborers who are enslaved 
are all negroes, or persons more or less purely 
of African derivation. But this is only acci- 
dental. The principle of the system is, that la- 
bor in ever)^ society, by whomsoever performed, 
is necessarily unintellectual, grovelling and base ; 
and that the laborer, equally for his o\^'n good 
and for the welfare of the State, ought to be 
enslaved. The white laboring man, whether 
native or foreigner, is not enslaved, only because 
he cannot, as yet, be reduced to bondage. 

You need not be told now that the slave sys- 
tem is the older of the two, and that once it was 
universal. The emancipation of our own ances- 
tors, Caucasians and Europeans as they were, 
hardly dates beyond a period of five hundred 
years. The great melioration of human society 



36 WM. H. SEWARD. 

which modern times exhibit, is mainly due to 
the incomplete substitution of the system of 
voluntary labor for the one of servile labor, 
which has already taken place. This African 
slave system is one which, in its origin and in 
its growth, has been altogether foreign from the 
habits of the races which colonized these States, 
and established cizilization here. It was intro- 
duced on this continent as an engine of conquest, 
and for the establishment of monarchical power, 
by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, and was 
rapidly extended by them all over South Amer- 
ica, Central America, Louisiana, and Mexico. 
Its legitimate fruits are seen in the poverty, im- 
becility, and anarchy which now pervade all 
Portuguese and Spanish America. The free-la- 
bor system is of German extraction, and it was 
established in our country by emigrants from 
Sweden, Holland, Germany, Great Britain and 
Ireland. We justly ascribe to its influences the 
strength, wealth, greatness, intelligence, and 
freedom, which the whole American people now 
enjoy. One of the chief elements of the value 
of human life is freedom in the pursuit of hap- 
piness. The slave system is not only intolera- 
ble, unjust, and inhuman, toward the laborer, 
whom, only because he is a laborer, it loads 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 37 

down with chains and converts into merchandise, 
but is scarcely less severe upon the freeman, to 
whom, only because he is a laborer from neces- 
sity, it denies facilities for employment, and 
whom it expels from the community because it 
cannot enslave and convert into merchandise 
also. It is necessarily improvident and ruinous, 
because, as a general truth, communities prosper 
and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the 
degree that they practise or neglect to practise 
the primary duties of justice and humanity. 
The free-labor system conforms to the divine 
law of equality, which is written in the hearts 
and consciences of man, and therefore is always 
and everywhere beneficent. 

The slave system is one of constant danger, 
distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It de- 
bases those whose toil alone can produce 
wealth and resources for defence, to the lowest 
degree of which human nature is capable, to 
guard against mutiny and insurrection, and 
thus wastes energies which otherwise might be 
employed in national development and aggran- 
dizement. 

The free-labor system educates all alike, and 
by opening all the fields of industrial employ- 
ment and all the departments of authority, to the 



38 WM. H. SEWARD. 

unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, 
at once secures universal contentment, and 
brings into the highest possible activity all the 
physical, moral, and social energies of the whole 
state. In states where the slave system pre- 
vails, the masters, directly or indirectly, secure 
all political power, and constitute a ruling 
aristocracy. In states where the free-labor sys- 
tem prevails, universal suffrage necessarily ob- 
tains, and the state inevitably becomes, sooner 
or later, a republic or democracy. 

Russia yet maintains slavery, and is a des- 
potism. Most of the other European states 
have abolished slavery, and adopted the sys- 
tem of free labor. It was the antagonistic 
political tendencies of the two systems which 
the first Napoleon was contemplating when he 
predicted that Europe would ultimately be 
either all Cossack or all republican. Never did 
human sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. 
The two systems are at once perceived to be 
incongruous. But they are more than incon- 
gruous — they are incompatible. They never 
have permanently existed together in one 
country, and they never can. It would be 
easy to demonstrate this impossibility, from the 
irreconcilable contrast between their great 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONPLICT. 39 

principles and characteristics. But the experi- 
ence of mankind has conclusively established 
it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed 
in every state in Europe. Free labor has sup- 
planted it everywhere except in Russia and 
Turkey. State necessities developed in modern 
times are now obliging even those two nations 
to encourage and employ free labor ; and 
already, despotic as they are, we find them en- 
gaged in abolishing slavery. In the United 
States, slavery came into collision with free 
labor at the close of the last century, and fell 
before it in New England, New York, New 
Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but triumphed over it 
effectually, and excluded it for a period yet un- 
determined, from Virginia, the Carolinas, and 
Georgia. Indeed, so incompatible are the two 
systems, that every new State which is organized 
within our ever-extending domain makes its 
first political act a choice of the one and the ex- 
clusion of the other, even at the cost of civil 
war, if necessary. The slave States, without 
law, at the last national election, successfully 
forbade, within their own limits, even the cast- 
ing of votes for a candidate for President of the 
United States supposed to be favorable to the 
establishment of the free-labor system in new 
States. 



40 fVM. H. SEWARD. 

Hitherto, the two systems have existed in 
different States, but side by side within the 
American Union. This has happened because 
the Union is a confederation of States. But in 
another aspect the United States constitute 
only one nation. Increase of population, which 
is fiUing the States out to their very borders, 
together with a new and extended net-work of 
railroads and other avenues, and an internal 
commerce which daily becomes more intimate, 
is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and 
more perfect social unity or consolidation. 
Thus, these antagonistic systems are continu- 
ally coming into closer contact, and collision 
results. 

Shall I tell you what this collision means? 
They who think that it is accidental, unneces- 
sary, the work of interested or fanatical agita- 
tors, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case 
altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between 
opposing and enduring forces, and it means that 
the United States must and will, sooner or 
later, become either entirely a slave-holding na- 
tion, or entirely a free-labor nation. Either the 
cotton- and rice-fields of South Carolina and 
the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ulti- 
mately be tilled by free-labor, and Charleston 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT, 4I 

and New Orleans become marts of legitimate 
merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and 
wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York 
must again be surrendered by their farmers to 
slave culture and to the production of slaves, 
and Boston and New York become once more 
markets for trade in the bodies and souls of 
men. It is the failure to apprehend this great 
truth that induces so many unsuccessful at- 
tempts at final compromises between the slave 
and free States, and it is the existence of this 
great fact that renders all such pretended com- 
promises, when made, vain and ephemeral. 
Startling as this saying may appear to you, fel- 
low-citizens, it is by no means an original or 
even a modern one. Our forefathers knew it 
to be true, and unanimously acted upon it when 
they framed the Constitution of the United 
States. They regarded the existence of the 
servile system in so many of the States with 
sorrow and shame, which they openly confessed, 
and they looked upon the collision between 
them, which was then just revealing itself, and 
which we are now accustomed to deplore, with 
favor and hope. They knew that one or the 
other system must exclusively prevail. 

Unlike too many of those who in modern 



42 JVM. H. SEWARD. 

time invoke their authority, they had a choice 
between the two. They preferred the system 
of free labor, and they determined to organize 
the government, and so direct its activity, that 
that system should surely and certainly prevail. 
For this purpose, and no other, they based the 
whole structure of the government broadly on 
the principle that all men are created equal, and 
therefore free — little dreaming that, within the 
short period of one hundred years, their de- 
scendants would bear to be told by any orator, 
however popular, that the utterance of that 
principle was merely a rhetorical rhapsody ; or 
by any judge, however venerated, that it was 
attended by mental reservation, which rendered 
it hypocritical and false. By the ordinance of 
1787, they dedicated all of the national domain 
not yet polluted by slavery to free labor imme- 
diately, thenceforth and forever; while by the 
new Constitution and laws they invited foreign 
free labor from all lands under the sun, and in- 
terdicted the importation of African slave labor, 
at all times, in all places, and under all circum- 
stances whatsoever. It is true that they neces- 
sarily and wisely modified this policy of freedom 
by leaving it to the several States, affected as 
they were by different circumstances, to abolish 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 43 

slavery in their own way and at their own 
pleasure, instead of confiding that duty to 
Congress ; and that they secured to the slave 
States, while yet retaining the system of slavery, 
a three-fifths representation of slaves in the 
Federal Government, until they should find 
themselves able to relinquish it with safety. But 
the very nature of these modifications fortifies 
my position, that the fathers knew that the two 
systems could not endure within the Union, 
and expected within a short period slavery 
would disappear forever. Moreover, in order 
that these modifications might not altogether 
defeat their grand design of a republic main- 
taining universal equality, they provided that 
two thirds of the States might amend the Con- 
stitution. 

It remains to say on this point only one word, 
to guard against misapprehension. If these 
States are to again become universally slave- 
holding, I do not pretend to say with what 
violations of the Constitution that end shall be 
accomplished. On the other hand, while I do 
confidently believe and hope that my country 
will yet become a land of universal freedom, I 
do not expect that it will be made so otherwise 
than through the action of the several States 



44 ^-^^ H. SEWARD. 

cooperating with the Federal Government, and 
all acting in strict conformity with their respec- 
tive constitutions. 

The strife and contentions concerning slavery, 
which gently-disposed persons so habitually 
deprecate, are nothing more that the ripening 
of the conflict which the fathers themselves not 
only thus regarded with favor, but which they 
may be said to have instituted. 

* * * I know — few, I think, know better 
than I — the resources and energies of the Dem- 
ocratic party, which is identical with the slave 
power. I do ample justice to its traditional 
popularity. I know further — few, I think, know 
better than I — the difificulties and disadvan- 
tages of organizing a new political force, like 
the Republican party, and the obstacles it must 
encounter in laboring without prestige and 
without patronage. But, understanding all 
this, I know that the Democratic party must go 
down, and that the Republican party must rise 
into its place. The Democratic party derived 
its strength, originally, from its adoption of the 
principles of equal and exact justice to all men. 
So long as it practised this principle faithfully, 
it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable when 
it renounced the principle, and since that time 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 45 

it has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own 
strength, or even of its traditional merits, but 
because there as yet had appeared in the politi- 
cal field no other party that had the conscience 
and the courage to take up, and avow, and prac- 
tise the life-inspiring principle which the Dem- 
ocratic party had surrendered. At last, the 
Republican party has appeared. It avows, now, 
as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one 
word, its faith and its works, " Equal and ex- 
act justice to all men." Even when it first 
entered the field, only half organized, it struck 
a blow which only just failed to secure com- 
plete and triumphant victory. In this, its 
second campaign, it has already won advantages 
which render that triumph now both easy and 
certain. 

The secret of its assured success lies in that 
very characteristic which, in the mouth of scof- 
fers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility 
and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a 
party of one idea ; but that is a noble one — an 
idea that fills and expands all generous souls ; 
the idea of equality — the equality, of all men 
before human tribunals and human laws, as 
they all are equal before the Divine tribunal 
and Divine laws. 



46 WM. H. SEWARD. 

I know, and you know, that a revolution has 
begun. I know, and all the world knows, that 
revolutions never go backward. Twenty Sena- 
tors and a hundred Representatives proclaim 
boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opin- 
ions and principles of freedom which hardly so 
many men, even in this free State, dared to 
utter in their own homes twenty years ago. 
While the Government of the United States, 
under the conduct of the Democratic party, 
has been all that time surrendering one plain 
and castle after another to slavery, the people 
of the United States have been no less steadily 
and perseveringly gathering together the forces 
with which to recover back again all the fields 
and all the castles which have been lost, and to 
confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, 
the betrayers of the Constitution and freedom 
forever. 



VI. 

SECESSION. 



VI. 

SECESSION. 

From the beginning of our history it has 
been a mooted question whether we are to 
consider the United States as a political state 
or as a congeries of political states, as a Bundes- 
staat or as a Staatenbund. The essence of the 
controversy seems to be contained in the very 
title of the republic, one school laying stress on 
the word United, as the other does on the word 
States. The phases of the controversy have 
been beyond calculation, and one of its conse- 
quences has been a civil war of tremendous 
energy and cost in blood and treasure. 

Looking at the facts alone of our history, 
one would be most apt to conclude that the 
United States had been a political state from 
the beginning, its form being entirely revolu- 
tionary until the final ratification of the Articles 
49 



50 SECESSIOA\ 

of Confederation in 1781, then under the very- 
loose and inefficient government of the Articles 
until 1789, and thereafter under the very effi- 
cient national government of the Constitution ; 
that, in the final transformation of 1787-9, 
there were features which were also decidedly 
revolutionary ; but that there was no time 
when any of the colonies had the prospect or 
the power of establishing a separate national 
existence of its own. The facts are not con- 
sistent with the theory that the States ever 
were independent political states, in any scien- 
tific sense. 

It cannot be said, however, that the actors in 
the history always had a clear perception of the 
facts as they took place. In the teeth of the 
facts, our early history presents a great variety 
of assertions of State independence by leading 
men, State Legislatures, or State constitutions, 
which still form the basis of the argument for 
State sovereignty. The State constitutions 
declared the State to be sovereign and inde- 
pendent, even though the framers knew that 



SECESSION. 51 

the existence of the State depended on the 
issue of the national struggle against the mother 
country. The treaty of 1783 with Great Britain 
recognized the States separately and by name 
as " free, sovereign, and independent," even 
while it established national boundaries outside 
of the States, covering a vast western territory 
in which no State would have ventured to for- 
feit its interest by setting up a claim to prac- 
tical freedom, sovereignty, or independence. 
All our early history is full of such contradic- 
tions between fact and theory. They are 
largely obscured by the undiscriminating use of 
the word " people." As used now, it usually 
means the national people ; but many appar- 
ently national phrases as to the " sovereignty 
of the people," as they were used in 1787-9, 
would seem far less national if the phraseology 
could show the feeling of those who then used 
them that the " people " referred to was the 
people of the State. In that case the number 
of the contradictions would be indefinitely in- 
creased ; and the phraseology of the Constitu- 



52 SECESSION. 

tion's preamble, " We, the people of the United 
States," would not be offered as a consciously 
nationalizing phrase of its framers. It is hardly 
to be doubted, from the current debates, that 
the conventions of Massachusetts, New Hamp- 
shire, Rhode Island, New York, Virginia, North 
Carolina, and South Carolina, seven of the thir- 
teen States, imagined and assumed that each 
ratified the Constitution in 1788-90 by au- 
thority of the State's people alone, by the 
State's sovereign will ; while the facts show 
that in each of these conventions a clear ma- 
jority was coerced into ratification by a strong 
minority in its own State, backed by the unani- 
mous ratifications of the other States. If rati- 
fication or rejection had really been open to 
voluntary choice, to sovereign will, the Consti- 
tution would never have had a moment's 
chance of life ; so far from being ratified by 
nine States as a condition precedent to going 
into effect, it would have been summarily re- 
jected by a majority of the States. In the lan- 
guage of John Adams, the Constitution was 



SECESSION. 53 

" extorted from the grinding necessities of a 
reluctant people." The theory of State sov- 
ereignty was successfully contradicted by na- 
tional necessities. 

The change from the Articles of Confedera- 
tion to the Constitution, though it could not 
help antagonizing State sovereignty, was care- 
fully managed so as to do so as little as possi- 
ble. As soon as the plans by which the Federal 
party, under Hamilton's leadership, proposed 
to develop the national features of the Consti- 
tution became evident, the latent State feeling 
took fire. Its first symptom was the adoption 
of the name Republican by the new opposition 
party which took form in 1792-3 under Jeffer- 
son's leadership. Up to this time the States 
had been the only means through which Ameri- 
cans had known any thing of republican gov- 
ernment ; they had had no share in the govern- 
ment of the mother country in colonial times, 
and no efficient national government to take 
part in under the Articles of Confederation. 
The claim of an exclusive title to the name of 



54 SECESSION. 

Republican does not seem to have been funda- 
mentally an implication of monarchical tenden- 
cies against the Federalists so much as an im- 
plication that they were hostile to the States, 
the familiar exponents of republican govern- 
ment. When the Federalist majority in Con- 
gress forced through, in the war excitement 
against France in 1798, the Alien and Sedition 
laws, which practically empowered the Presi- 
dent to suppress all party criticism of and 
opposition to the dominant party, the Legisla- 
tures of Kentucky and Virginia, in 1798-9, 
passed series of resolutions, prepared by Jeffer- 
son and Madison respectively, which for the 
first time asserted in plain terms the sover- 
eignty of the States. The two sets of resolu- 
tions agreed in the assertion that the Constitu- 
tion was a " compact," and that the States were 
the " parties " which had formed it. In these 
two propositions lies the gist of State sover- 
eignty, of which all its remotest consequences 
are only natural developments. If it were true 
that the States, of their sovereign will, had 



secession: 55 

formed such a compact ; if it were not true that 
the adoption of the Constitution was a mere 
alteration of the form of a political state already 
in existence ; it would follow, as the Kentucky 
resolutions asserted, that each State had the 
exclusive right to decide for itself when the 
compact had been broken, and the mode and 
measure of redress. It followed, also, that, if 
the existence and force of the Constitution in a 
State were due solely to the sovereign will of 
the State, the sovereign will of the State was 
competent, on occasion, to oust the Constitu- 
tion from the jurisdiction covered by the State. 
In brief, the Union was wholly voluntary in 
its formation and in its continuance ; and each 
State reserved the unquestionable right to 
secede, to abandon the Union, and assume an 
independent existence whenever due reason, in 
the exclusive judgment of the State, should 
arise. These latter consequences, not stated in 
the Kentucky resolutions, and apparently not 
contemplated by the Virginia resolutions, were 
put into complete form by Professor Tucker, of 



56 SECESSION. 

the University of Virginia, in 1803, in the notes 
to his edition of " Blackstone's Commentaries." 
Thereafter its statements of American consti- 
tutional law controlled the political training of 
the South. 

Madison held a modification of the State 
sovereignty theory, which has counted among its 
adherents the mass of the ability and influence 
of American authorities on constitutional law. 
Holding that the Constitution was a compact, 
and that the States were the parties to it, he 
held that one of the conditions of the compact 
was the abandonment of State sovereignty ; 
that the States were sovereign until 1787-8, but 
thereafter only members of a political state, 
the United States. This seems to have been 
the ground taken by Webster, in his debates 
with Hayne and Calhoun. It was supported 
by the instances in which the appearance of a 
sovereignty in each State was yielded in the 
fourteen years before 1787; but, unfortunately 
for the theory, Calhoun was able to produce in- 
stances exactly parallel after 1787. If the fact 



SECESSION. 57 

that each State predicated its own sovereignty 
as an essential part of the steps preliminary to 
the convention of 1787 be a sound argument 
for State sovereignty before 1787, the fact that 
each State predicated its sovereignty as an 
essential part of the ratification of the Constitu- 
tion must be taken as an equally sound argu- 
ment for State sovereignty under the Constitu- 
tion ; and it seems difificult, on the Madison 
theory, to resist Calhoun's triumphant conclu- 
sion that, if the States went into the conven- 
tion as sovereign States, they came out of it as 
sovereign States, with, of course, the right of 
secession. Calhoun himself had a sincere de- 
sire to avoid the exercise of the right of seces- 
sion, and it was as a substitute for it that he 
evolved his doctrine of nullification, which has 
been placed in the first volume. When it failed 
in 1833, the exercise of the right of secession 
was the only remaining remedy for an asserted 
breach of State sovereignty. 

The events which led up to the success of the 
Republican party in electing Mr. Lincoln to the 



58 SECESSION. 

Presidency in i860 are so intimately connected 
with the antislavery struggle that they have 
been placed in the preceding volume. They 
culminated in the first organized attempt to 
put the right of secession to a practical test. 
The election of Lincoln, the success of a " sec- 
tional party," and the evasion of the fugitive- 
slave law through the passage of " personal-lib- 
erty laws " by many of the Northern States, 
are the leading reasons assigned by South Caro- 
lina for her secession in i860. These were in- 
telligible reasons, and were the ones most com- 
monly used to influence the popular vote. But 
all the evidence goes to show that the leaders 
of secession were not so weak in judgment as 
to run the hazards of war by reason of " inju- 
ries " so minute as these. Their apprehensions 
were far broader, if less calculated to influence 
a popular vote. In 1789 the proportions of 
population and wealth in the two sections were 
very nearly equal. The slave system of labor 
had hung as a clog upon the progress of the 
South, preventing the natural development of 



SECESSION. ' 59 

manufactures and commerce, and shutting out 
immigration. As the numerical disproportion 
between the two sections increased, Southern 
leaders ceased to attempt to control the 
House of Representatives, contenting them- 
selves with balancing new Northern with new 
Southern States, so as to keep an equal vote in 
the Senate. Since 1845 this resource had failed. 
Five free States, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, 
Minnesota, and Oregon, had been admitted, 
with no new slave States ; Kansas was calling 
almost imperatively for admission ; and there 
was no hope of another slave State in future. 
When the election of i860 demonstrated that 
the progress of the antislavery struggle had 
united all the free States, it was evident that 
it was but a question of time when the Repub- 
lican party would control both branches of 
Congress and the Presidency, and have the 
power to make laws according to its own inter- 
pretation of the constitutional powers of the 
Federal Government. 

The peril to slavery was not only the prob- 



6o • SECESSION. 

able prohibition of the inter-State slave-trade, 
though this itself would have been an event 
which negro slavery in the South could hardly 
have long survived. The more pressing danger 
lay in the results of such general Republican 
success on the Supreme Court. The decision 
of that Court in the Dred Scott case had fully 
sustained every point of the extreme Southern 
claims as to the status of slavery in the Terri- 
tories ; it had held that slaves were property in 
the view of the Constitution ; that Congress 
.was bound to protect slave-holders in this prop- 
erty right in the Territories, and, still more, 
bound not to prohibit slavery or allow a Territo- 
rial Legislature to prohibit slavery in the Terri- 
tories, and that the Missouri compromise of 
1820 was unconstitutional and void. The 
Southern Democrats entered the election of 
i860 with this distinct decision of the highest 
judicial body of the country to back them. 
The Republican party had refused to admit 
that the decision of the Dred Scott case was 
law or binding. Given a Republican majority 



SECESSION. 6 1 

in both Houses and a Republican President, 
there was nothing to hinder the passage of a 
law increasing the number of Supreme Court 
justices to any desired extent, and the new ap- 
pointments would certainly be of such a nature 
as to make the reversal of the Dred Scott de- 
cision an easy matter. The election of i860 had 
brought only a Republican President ; the ma- 
jority in both Houses was to be against him until 
1863 at least. But the drift in the North and 
West was too plain to be mistaken, and it was 
felt that 1 860- 1 would be the last opportunity for 
the Gulf States to secede with dignity and with 
the prestige of the Supreme Court's support. 

Finally, there seems to have been a strong 
feeling among the extreme secessionists, who 
loved the right of secession for its own sake, 
that the accelerating increase in the relative 
power of the North would soon make seces- 
sion, on any grounds, impossible. Unless the 
right was to be forfeited by non-user, it must be 
established by practical exercise, and at once. 

Until about 1825-9 Presidential electors were 



62 SECESSION. 

chosen in most of the States by the Legisla- 
ture. After that period the old practice was 
kept up only in South Carolina. On election 
day of November, i860, the South Carolina 
Legislature was in session for the purpose of 
choosing electors, but it continued its session 
after this duty was performed, As soon as 
Lincoln's election was assured, the Legislature 
called a State Convention for Dec. 17th, took 
the preliminary steps toward putting the State 
on a war footing, and adjourned. The conven- 
tion met at the State capital, adjourned to 
Charleston, and here, Dec. 20, i860, passed unan- 
imously an Ordinance of Secession. By its terms 
the people of South Carolina, in convention as- 
sembled, repealed the ordinance of May 23, 1788, 
by which the Constitution had been ratified, 
and all Acts of the Legislature ratifying amend- 
ments to the Constitution, and declared the 
union between the State and other States, un- 
der the name of the United States of America, 
to be dissolved. By a similar process, similar 
ordinances were adopted by the State Conven- 



SECESSION. 63 

tions of Mississippi (Jan. 9th), Florida (Jan. 
loth), Alabama (Jan. nth), Georgia (Jan. 19th), 
Louisiana (Jan. 25th), and Texas (Feb. ist), 
— seven States in all. 

Outside of South Carolina, the struggle in 
the States named turned on the calling of the 
convention ; and in this matter the opposition 
was unexpectedly strong. We have the testi- 
mony of Alexander H. Stephens that the argu- 
ment most effective in overcoming the opposi- 
tion to the calling of a convention was : " We 
can make better terms out of the Union than 
in it." The necessary implication was that 
secession was not to be final ; that it was only 
to be a temporary withdrawal until terms of 
compromise and security for the fugitive-slave 
law and for slavery in the Territories could be 
extorted from the North and West. The argu- 
ment soon proved to be an intentional sham. 

There has always been a difference between 
the theory of the State Convention at the 
North and at the South. At the North, barring 
a few very exceptional cases, the rule has been 



64 SECESSION. 

that no action of a State Convention is valid 
until confirmed by popular vote. At the South, 
in obedience to the strictest application of State 
sovereignty, the action of the State Convention 
was held to be the voice of the people of the 
State, which needed no popular ratification. 
There was, therefore, no remedy when the State 
Conventions, after passing the ordinances of 
secession, went on to appoint delegates to a 
Confederate Congress, which met at Mont- 
gomery, Feb. 4, 1 861, adopted a provisional 
constitution Feb. 8th, and elected a President 
and Vice-President Feb. 9th. The conventions 
ratified the provisional constitution and ad- 
journed, their real object having been com- 
pletely accomplished ; and the people of the 
several seceding States, by the action of their 
omnipotent State Conventions, and without 
their having a word to say about it, found them- 
selves under a new government, totally irrecon- 
cilable with the jurisdiction of the United 
States, and necessarily hostile to it. The only 
exception was Texas, whose State Convention 



SECESSION. 65 

had been called in a method so utterly revolu- 
tionary that it was felt to be necessary to con- 
done its defects by a popular vote. 

No declaration had ever been made by any 
authority that the erection of such hostile power 
within the national boundaries of the United 
States would be followed by war ; such a 
declaration would hardly seem necessary. The 
recognition of the original national boundaries 
of the United States had been extorted from 
Great Britain by successful warfare. They had 
been extended by purchase from France and 
Spain in 1803 and 18 19, and again by war from 
Mexico in 1848. The United States stood 
ready to guarantee their integrity by war against 
all the rest of the world ; was an ordinance of 
South Carolina, or the election of a de facto 
government within Southern borders, likely to 
receive different treatment than was given 
British troops at Bunker Hill, or Santa Anna's 
lancers at Buena Vista ? Men forgot that the 
national boundaries had been so drawn as to 
include Vermont before Vermont's admission 



66 SECESSION. 

and without Vermont's consent ; that unofficial 
propositions to divide Rhode Island between 
Connecticut and Massachusetts, to embargo 
commerce with North Carolina, and demand 
her share of the Confederation debt, had in 
1789-90 been a sufficient indication that it was 
easier for a State to get into the American 
Union than to get out of it. It was a fact, 
nevertheless, that the national power to enforce 
the integrity of the Union had never been 
formally declared; and the mass of men in the 
South, even though they denied the expedi- 
ency, did not deny the right of secession, or ac- 
knowledge the right of coercion by the Federal 
Government. To reach the original area of 
secession with land-forces, it was necessary for 
the Federal Government to cross the Border 
States, whose people in general were no believ- 
ers in the right of coercion. The first attempt 
to do so extended the secession movement by 
methods which were far more openly revolu- 
tionary than the original secessions. North 
Carolina and Arkansas seceded in orthodox 
fashion as soon as President Lincoln called for 



SECESSION. 6y 

volunteers after the capture of Fort Sumter. 
The State governments of Virginia and Ten- 
nessee concluded "military leagues" with the 
Confederacy, allowed Confederate troops to take 
possession of their States, and then submitted 
an ordinance of secession to the form of a 
popular vote. The State officers of Missouri 
were chased out of the State before they could 
do more than begin this process. In Maryland, 
the State government arrayed itself success- 
fully against secession. 

In selecting the representative opinions for 
this period, all the marked shades of opinion 
have been respected, both the Union and the 
anti-coercion sentiment of the Border States, 
the extreme secession spirit of the Gulf States, 
and, from the North, the moderate and the ex- 
treme Republican, and the orthodox Demo- 
cratic, views. The feeling of the so-called 
"peace Democrats" of the North differed so 
little from those of Toombs or Iverson that 
it has not seemed advisable to do more than 
refer to Vallandigham's speech in opposition 
to the war, under the next period. 



THOMAS L. CLINGMAN, 

OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
(born i8ir.) 



ON SECESSION ; BORDER STATE OPINION (aNTI-CO- 

ERCIOn) ; IN THE UNITED STATES 

SENATE, DECEMBER 4, 1860. 

Mr. President : 

My purpose was not so much to make a 
speech as to state what I think is the great dif- 
ficulty ; and that is that a man has been elected 
because he has been and is hostile to the South. 
It is this that alarms our people ; and I am free 
to say, as I have said on the stump this sum- 
mer repeatedly, that if an election were not 
resisted, either now or at some day not far 
distant the Abolitionists would succeed in abol- 
ishing slavery all over the South. 

Now, as to this idea of gentlemen waiting 
for overt acts. Why, sir, if the fugitive-slave 
law had been repealed without these occur- 
rences it could not have produced half the ex- 
68 



SECESSION. 69 

citement in the country. Men would have said : 
" We have gotten back very few negroes under 
it ; its repeal merely puts us where we were ten 
years ago. " Again, if you were to abolish 
slavery in this District it would be said : *' There 
are only a few thousand slaves here ; that is a 
small matter ; are you going to disturb this 
great Union just for the sake of a few thousand 
slaves ? " It is said, however, by some persons, 
that we are to submit until revolution is more 
tolerable than the acts of which we complain. 
That was not the policy of our revolutionary- 
fathers. Nobody supposes that the tea tax or 
the stamp tax was an oppressive measure in it- 
self. They saw, however, that if they were 
submitted to, in time oppression would be prac- 
tised, and they wisely resisted at the start. 

Now, sir, I take it for granted that Lincoln 
would resort to no overt acts in the first in- 
stance. I cannot conceive that he would have 
the folly to do so. I presume that he would 
be conservative in his declarations, and I should 
attach just as much weight to them as I would 
to the soothing words and manner of a man 
who wanted to mount a wild horse, and who 
would not, until he was safely in the saddle, 
apply whip or spur. I take it for granted, when 



^d THOMAS L. CLINGMAN 

he comes in, he will make things as quiet as he 
can make them at first. I presume the policy 
of the party would be to endeavor to divide 
the South. They complain that Abolition docu- 
uments are not circulated there. They wish to 
have an opportunity, by circulating such things 
as Helper's book, of arraying the non-slave- 
holders and poor men against the wealthy. I 
have no doubt that would be their leading pol- 
icy, and they would be very quiet about it. 
They want to get up that kind of " free debate " 
which has been put into practice in Texas, ac- 
cording to the Senator from New York, for he 
is reported to have said in one of his speeches 
in the Northwest, alluding to recent disturb- 
ances, to burnings and poisonings there, that 
Texas was excited by " free debate. " Well, 
sir, a Senator from Texas told me the other day 
that a good many of those debaters were hang- 
ing up on the trees in that country. I have no 
doubt, also, they would run off slaves faster 
from the border States, and perhaps oblige the 
slave-owners to send them down further south, 
so as to make some of those States free States ; 
and then, when the South was divided to some 
extent, the overt acts would come, and we 
should have, perhaps, a hard struggle to escape 
destruction. 



SECESSION. 71 

Therefore, I maintain that our true policy is 
to meet this issue in limine, and I hope it will 
be done. If we can maintain our personal 
safety let us hold on to the present Govern- 
ment ; if not we must take care of ourselves at 
all hazards. I think this is the feeling that pre- 
vails in North Carolina. I have spoken of there 
being two parties there, but I may say to you, 
Mr. President, that that party which is for im- 
mediate action is gaining strength rapidly, I 
do not believe there has been a meeting yet 
held in the State where there was a collision of 
opinion that ultra resolutions have not been 
adopted. This feehng is not confined to either 
of the political parties which made a struggle 
there in the late elections. The current of re- 
sistance is running rapidly over the South. It 
is idle for men to shut their eyes to con- 
sequences like these. If any thing can be done 
to avert the evil let those who have the power 
do it. I will not now detain the Senate longer. 



JOHN JORDAN CRITTENDEN, 

OF KENTUCKY. 

(born 1786, DIED 1863.) 



ON SECESSION ; BORDER STATE OPINION (uNIONIST); 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, DEC. 4, 1860. 

Mr. President : 

I regret that the honorable Senator from 
North Carohna has thought proper to make the 
speech which he has just addressed to the Sen- 
ate. I did hope that we had all come together 
upon this occasion duly impressed with the 
solemnity of the business that would devolve 
upon us, duly impressed with the great dangers 
that were impending over our country, and es- 
pecially with those dangers which threaten the 
existence of our Union. That was the temper 
in which I hoped we were now assembled. I 
hope this debate will proceed no further. The 
gentleman has hardly uttered a sentiment or an 
opinion in which I do not disagree with him — 
hardly one, sir. I have hopes of the preservation 
72 



SECESSION. 73 

of that Union under which I have so long lived ; 
I have hopes that that Union which was the 
glory of our fathers will not become the shame 
of their children. But I rise here now, sir, not 
for the purpose of making a speech, and I in- 
tend to stick to my purpose. I wish the gen- 
tleman had stuck to his when he said he rose 
not to make a speech. I rise here to express 
the hope, and that alone, that the bad example 
of the gentleman will not be followed, and that 
we shall not allow ourselves now to be involved 
in an angry debate. We had better not have 
come here at all if that is our purpose. If we 
have not come here to give a deliberate and a 
solemn consideration to the grave questions 
that are thrust upon us, we are not fit for the 
places we occupy. This Union was established 
by great sacrifices ; this Union is worthy of 
great sacrifices and great concessions for its 
maintenance ; and I trust there is not a Senator 
here who is not willing to yield and to com- 
promise much in order to preserve the govern- 
ment and the Union of the country. 

I look forward with dismay and with some- 
thing like despair to the condition of this 
country when the Union shall be stricken do^n, 
and we shall be turned loose again to speculate 



74 JOHN JORDAN CRITTENDEN. 

on the policies and on the foundation upon 
which we are to estabhsh governments. I look 
at it, sir, with a fear and trembling that predis- 
pose me to the most solemn considerations that 
I am capable of feeling, to search out, if it be 
possible, some means for the reconciliation of 
all the different sections and members of this 
Union, and see if we cannot again restore that 
harmony and that fraternity and that union 
which once existed in this country, and which 
gave so much of blessing and so much of bene- 
fit to us all. I hope that we shall not now en- 
gage in any irritating or angry debate. Our 
duties require of us very different dispositions 
of mind ; and I trust none of us will allow our- 
selves to be irritated or provoked, or through 
any inadvertence involved in any angry or irri- 
tating discussions now. Calm consideration is 
demanded of us ; a solemn duty is to be per- 
formed, not invectives to be pronounced ; not 
passions to be aroused ; not wrongs to be de- 
tailed and aggravated over and over again. 
Let us look to the future ; let us look to the 
present only to see what are the dangers and 
what are the remedies, and to appeal for the 
adoption of those remedies, to the good feeling 
of every portion of this House. It is in that 



SECESSION. 75 

way only that we can arrive at a peaceable and 
satisfactory conclusion. 

I am content, sir, that the gentleman's mo- 
tion for printing the message shall be passed, 
and will waive any remarks which I might have 
been disposed otherwise to make on that mes- 
sage. I do not agree that there is no power in 
the President to preserve the Union. I will say 
that now. If we have a Union at all, and if, as 
the President thinks, there is no right to secede 
on the part of any State (and I agree with him in 
that), I think there is a right to employ our 
power to preserve the Union. I do not say how 
we should apply it, or under what circumstances 
we should apply it. I leave all that open. To 
say that no State has a right to secede, that 
it is wrong to the Union, and yet that the 
Union has no right to interpose any obstacle to 
its secession, seems to me to be altogether con- 
tradictory. 



ALFRED IVERSON, 

OF GEORGIA. 

(born 1798, DIED 1874.) 



ON SECESSION ; SECESSIONIST OPINION ; IN THE 
UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 5, i860. 

I DO not rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of 
entering at any length into this discussion, or to 
defend the President's message, which has been 
attacked by the Senator from New Hampshire.* 
I am not the mouth-piece of the President. 
While I do not agree with some portions of the 
message, and some of the positions that have 
been taken by the President, I do not perceive 
all the inconsistencies in that document which 
the Senator from New Hampshire has thought 
proper to present. 

It is true, that the President denies the con- 
stitutional right of a State to secede from the 
Union ; while, at the same time, he also states 
that this Federal Government has no constitu- 

*See page 105. 
76 



SECESSION. 'JJ 

tional right to enforce or to coerce a State back 
into the Union which may take upon itself the 
responsibiHty of secession. I do not see any 
inconsistency in that. The President may 
be right when he asserts the fact that no State 
has a constitutional right to secede from the 
Union. I do not myself place the right of a 
State to secede from the Union upon constitu- 
tional grounds. I admit that the Constitution 
has not granted that power to a State. It 
is exceedingly doubtful even whether the right 
has been reserved. Certainly it has not been 
reserved in express terms. I therefore do not 
place the expected action of any of the Southern 
States, in the present contingency, upon the 
constitutional right of secession ; and I am not 
prepared to dispute therefore, the position 
which the President has taken upon that point. 
I rather agree with the President that the 
secession of a State is an act of revolution taken 
through that particular means or by that particu- 
lar measure. It withdraws from the Federal 
compact, disclaims any further allegiance to it, 
and sets itself up as a separate government, an 
independent State. The State does it at its 
peril, of course, because it may or may not be 
cause of war by the remaining States composing 



yS ALFRED IVERSON, 

the Federal Government. If they think proper 
to consider it such an act of disobedience, or if 
they consider that the poHcy of the Federal 
Government be such that it cannot submit to 
this dismemberment, why then they may or 
may not make war if they choose upon the se- 
ceding States. It will be a question of course 
for the Federal Government or the remain- 
ing States to decide for themselves, whether 
they will permit a State to go out of the Union, 
and remain as a separate and independent State, 
or whether they will attempt to force her back 
at the point of the bayonet. That is a question, 
I presume, of policy and expediency, which 
will be considered by the remaining States 
composing the Federal Government, through 
their organ, the Federal Government, whenever 
the contingency arises. 

But, sir, while a State has no power, under the 
Constitution, conferred upon it to secede from 
the Federal Government or from the Union, 
each State has the right of revolution, which all 
admit. Whenever the burdens of the govern- 
ment under which it acts become so onerous 
that it cannot bear them, or if anticipated evil 
shall be so great that the State believes it would 
be better off — even risking the perils of seces- 



SECESSION. 79 

sion — out of the Union than in it, then that 
State, in my opinion, Hke all people upon earth 
has the right to exercise the great fundamental 
principle of self-preservation, and go out of the 
Union — though, of course, at its own peril — and 
bear the risk of the consequences. And while 
no State may have the constitutional right to 
secede from the Union, the President may not 
be wrong when he says the Federal Govern- 
ment has no power under the Constitution to 
compel the State to come back into the Union. 
It may be a casus omissus in the Constitution ; 
but I should like to know where the power 
exists in the Constitution of the United States 
to authorize the Federal Government to coerce 
a sovereign State. It does not exist in terms, at 
any rate, in the Constitution. I do not think 
there is any inconsistency, therefore, between 
the two positions of the President in the mes- 
sage upon these particular points. 

The only fault I have to find with the message 
of the President, is the inconsistency of another 
portion. He declares that, as the States have no 
power to secede, the Federal Government is in 
fact a consolidated government ; that it is not 
a voluntary association of States. I deny it. It 
was a voluntary association of States. No State 



8o ALFRED IVERSON. 

was ever forced to come into the Federal Union. 
Every State came voluntarily into it. It was 
an association, a voluntary association of States ; 
and the President's position that it is not a 
voluntary association is, in my opinion, alto- 
gether wrong. 

But whether that be so or not, the President 
declares and assumes that this government is a 
consolidated government to this extent : that 
all the laws of the Federal Government are to 
operate directly upon each individual of the 
States, if not upon the States themselves, and 
must be enforced ; and yet, at the same time, 
he says that the State which secedes is not to 
be coerced. He says that the laws of the 
United States must be enforced against every 
individual of a State. 

Of course, the State is composed of indi- 
viduals within its limits, and if you enforce the 
laws and obligations of the Federal Government 
against each and every individual of the State, 
you enforce them against a State. While, 
therefore, he says that a State is not to be 
coerced, he declares, in the same breath, his 
determination to enforce the laws of the Union, 
and therefore to coerce the State if a State 
goes out. There is the inconsistency, according 



SECESSION. 8 1 

to my idea, which I do not see how the Presi- 
dent or anybody else can reconcile. That the 
Federal Government is to enforce its laws over 
the seceding State, and yet not coerce her into 
obedience, is to me incomprehensible. 

But I did not rise, Mr. President, to discuss 
these questions in relation to the message ; I 
rose in behalf of the State that I represent, as 
well as other Southern States that are engaged 
in this movement, to accept the issue which the 
Senator from New Hampshire has seen fit to 
tender — that is, of zvar. Sir, the Southern 
States now moving in this matter are not doing 
it without due consideration. We have looked 
over the whole field. We believe that the only 
security for the institution to which we attach 
so much importance is secession and a Southern 
confederacy. We are satisfied, notwithstanding 
the disclaimers upon the part of the Black Re- 
publicans to the contrary, that they intend to 
use the Federal power, when they get posses- 
sion of it, to put down and extinguish the 
institution of slavery in the Southern States. 
I do not intend to enter upon the discussion of 
that point. That, however, is my opinion. It 
is the opinion of a large majority of those with 
whom I associate at home, and I believe of the 



82 ALFRED IVERSON. 

Southern people. Believing that this is the 
intention and object, the ultimate aim and de- 
sign, of the Republican party, the Abolitionists 
of the North, we do not intend to stay in this 
Union until we shall become so weak that we 
shall not be able to resist when the time comes 
for resistance. Our true policy is the one which 
we have made up our minds to follow. Our 
true policy is to go out of this Union now, 
while we have strength to resist any attempt 
on the part of the Federal Government to co- 
erce us. * * * 

We intend, Mr. President, to go out peace- 
ably if we can, forcibly if we must ; but I do 
not believe, with the Senator from New Hamp- 
shire, that there is going to be any war. If five 
or eight States go out, they will necessarily 
draw all the other Southern States after them. 
That is a consequence that nothing can pre- 
vent. If five or eight States go out of this 
Union, I should like to see the man that would 
propose a declaration of war against them, or 
attempt to force them into obedience to the 
Federal Government at the point of the bayo- 
net or the sword. 

Sir, there has been a good deal of vaporing 
on this subject, A great many threats have 



SECESSIOA'. 83 

been thrown out. I have heard them on this 
floor, and upon the floor of the other House of 
Congress ; but I have also perceived this : they 
come from those who would be the very last 
men to attempt to put their threats into execu- 
tion. Men talk sometimes about their eighteen 
million who are to whip us ; and yet we have 
heard of cases in which just such men had 
suffered themselves to be switched in the face, 
and trembled like sheep-stealing dogs, expect- 
ing to be shot every minute. These threats 
generally come from men who would be the 
last to execute them. Some of these Northern 
editors talk about whipping the Southern 
States like spaniels. Brave words ; but I ven- 
ture to assert none of those men would ever 
volunteer to command an army to be sent 
down South to coerce us into obedience to 
Federal power, * * * 

But, sir, I apprehend that when we go out 
and form our confederacy — as I think and hope 
we shall do very shortly — the Northern States, 
or the Federal Government, will see its true 
policy to be to let us go in peace and make 
treaties of commerce and amity with us, from 
which they will derive more advantages than 
from any attempt to coerce us. They cannot 



84 ALFRED IVERSON. 

succeed in coercing us. If they allow us to 
form our government without difficulty, we 
shall be very willing to look upon them as a 
favored nation and give them all the advan- 
tages of commercial and amicable treaties. I 
have no doubt that both of us — certainly the 
Southern States — would live better, more hap- 
pily, more prosperously, and with greater friend- 
ship, than we live now in this Union. 

Sir, disguise the fact as you will, there is an 
enmity between the Northern and Southern 
people that is deep and enduring, and you 
never can eradicate it — never ! Look at the 
spectacle exhibited on this floor. How is it ? 
There are the Republican Northern Senators 
upon that side. Here are the Southern Sena- 
tors on this side. How much social intercourse 
is there between us ? You sit upon your side, 
silent and gloomy ; we sit upon ours with knit 
brows and portentous scowls. Yesterday I 
observed that there was not a solitary man on 
that side of the Chamber came over here even 
to extend the civilities and courtesies of life ; 
nor did any of us go over there. Here are two 
hostile bodies on this floor; and it is but a 
type of the feeling that exists between the two 
sections. We are enemies as much as if we 



SECESSION. 85 

were hostile States. I believe that the North- 
ern people hate the South worse than ever the 
English people hated France ; and I can tell 
my brethren over there that there is no love 
lost upon the part of the South. 

In this state of feeling, divided as we are by- 
interest, by a geographical feeling, by every 
thing that makes two people separate and dis- 
tinct, I ask why we should remain in the same 
Union together ? We have not lived in peace ; 
we are not now living in peace. It is not ex- 
pected or hoped that we shall ever live in peace. 
My doctrine is that whenever even man and 
wife find that they must quarrel, and cannot live 
in peace, they ought to separate ; and these 
two sections — the North and South — manifest- 
ing, as they have done and do now, and prob- 
ably will ever manifest, feelings of hostility, 
separated as they are in interests and objects, 
my own opinion is they can never live in peace ; 
and the sooner they separate the better. 

Sir, these sentiments I have thrown out 
crudely I confess, and upon the spur of the 
occasion. I should not have opened my mouth 
but that the Senator from New Hampshire 
seemed to show a spirit of bravado, as if he in- 
tended to alarm and scare the Southern States 



86 ALFRED IVERSON. 

into a retreat from their movements. He says 
that war is to come, and you had better take 
care, therefore. That is the purport of his 
language ; of course those are not his words ; 
but I understand him very well, and everybody 
else, I apprehend, understands him that war is 
threatened, and therefore the South had better 
look out. Sir, I do not believe that there will 
be any war ; but if war is to come, let it come. 
We will meet the Senator from New Hamp- 
shire and all the myrmidons of Abolitionism 
and Black Republicism everywhere, upon our 
own soil ; and in the language of a distin- 
guished member from Ohio in relation to the 
Mexican War, we will " welcome you with 
bloody hands to hospitable graves." 



ROBERT TOOMBS, 

OF GEORGIA. 
(born i8io.) 



ON SECESSION ; SECESSIONIST OPINION ; IN THE 
UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 7, 1861. 

Mr. President and Senators : 

The success of the AboHtionists and their 
allies, under the name of the Republican party, 
has produced its logical results already. They 
have for long years been sowing dragons' teeth, 
and have finally got a crop of armed men. 
The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an ac- 
complished fact in the path of this discussion 
that men may as well heed. One of your 
confederates has already, wisely, bravely, bold- 
ly, confronted public danger, and she is only 
ahead of many of her sisters because of her 
greater facility for speedy action. The greater 
majority of those sister States, under like cir- 
cumstances, consider her cause as their cause ; 
and I charge you in their name to-day, " Touch 
87 



88 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

not Saguntum." It is not only their cause, 
but it is a cause which receives the sympathy 
and will receive the support of tens and hun- 
dreds of thousands of honest patriotic men in 
the non-slave-holding States, who have hither- 
to maintained constitutional rights, and who 
respect their oaths, abide by compacts, and 
love justice. And while this Congress, this 
Senate, and this House of Representatives, are 
debating the constitutionality and the expedien- 
cy of seceding from the Union, and while the 
perfidious authors of this mischief are showering 
down denunciations upon a large portion of 
the patriotic men of this country, those brave 
men are coolly and calmly voting what you call 
revolution — ay, sir, doing better than that : 
arming to defend it. They appealed to the 
Constitution, they appealed to justice, they ap- 
pealed to fraternity, until the Constitution, 
justice, and fraternity were no longer listened 
to in the legislative halls of their country, and 
then, sir, they prepared for the arbitrament of 
the sword ; and now you see the glittering 
bayonet, and you hear the tramp of armed men 
from your Capitol to the Rio Grande. It is a 
sight that gladdens the eyes and cheers the 
heart of other millions ready to second them. 



SECESSION. 89 

Inasmuch, sir, as I have labored earnestly, hon- 
estly, sincerely, with these men to avert this 
necessity so long as I deemed it possible, and 
inasmuch as I heartily approve their present 
conduct of resistance, I deem it my duty to 
state their case to the Senate, to the country, 
and to the civilized world. 

Senators, my countrymen have demanded 
no new government ; they have demanded no 
new constitution. Look to their records at 
home and here from the beginning of this na- 
tional strife until its consummation in the dis- 
ruption of the empire, and they have not 
demanded a single thing except that you shall 
abide by the Constitution of the United States ; 
that constitutional rights shall be respected, 
and that justice shall be done. Sirs, they have 
stood by your Constitution ; they have stood 
by all its requirements ; they have performed 
all its duties unselfishly, uncalculatingly, disin- 
terestedly, until a party sprang up in this coun- 
try which endangered their social system — a 
party which they arraign, and which they charge 
before the American people and all mankind, 
with having made proclamation of outlawry 
against four thousand millions of their property 
in the Territories of the United States ; with 



90 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

having put them under the ban of the empire 
in all the States in which their institutions 
exist, outside the protection of Federal laws ; 
with having aided and abetted insurrection 
from within and invasion from without, with 
the view of subverting those institutions, and 
desolating their homes and their firesides. For 
these causes they have taken up arms. I shall 
proceed to vindicate the justice of their de- 
mands, the patriotism of their conduct. I will 
show the injustice which they suffer and the 
rightfulness of their resistance. 

I shall not spend much time on the question 
that seems to give my honorable friend (Mr. 
Crittenden) so much concern — the constitu- 
tional right of a State to secede from this 
Union. Perhaps he will find out after a while 
that it is a fact accomplished. You have got it 
in the South pretty much both ways. South 
Carolina has given it to you regularly, accord- 
ing to the approved plan. You are getting it 
just below there (in Georgia), I believe, irregu- 
larly, outside of the law, without regular action. 
You can take it either way. You will find 
armed men to defend both. I have stated that 
the discontented States of this Union have de- 
manded nothing but clear, distinct, unequivo- 



SECESSION. 91 

cal, well-acknowledged constitutional rights ; 
rights affirmed by the highest judicial tribunals 
of their country ; rights older than the Consti- 
tution ; rights which are planted upon the im- 
mutable principles of natural justice; rights 
which have been affirmed by the good and the 
wise of all countries, and of all centuries. We 
demand no power to injure any man. We de- 
mand no right to injure our confederate States. 
We demand no right to interfere with their in- 
stitutions, either by word or deed. We have 
no right to disturb their peace, their tranquillity, 
their security. We have demanded of them 
simply, solely — nothing else — to give us equality, 
security, and tranquillity. Give us these, and 
peace restores itself. Refuse them, and take 
what you can get. 

I will now read my own demands, acting under 
my own convictions, and the universal judg- 
ment of my countrymen. They are considered 
the demands of an extremist. To hold to a 
constitutional right now makes one considered 
as an extremist — I believe that is the appella-- 
tion these traitors and villains, North and South, 
employ. I accept their reproach rather than 
their principles. Accepting their designation 
of treason and rebellion, there stands before 



92 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

them as good a traitor, and as good a rebel as 
ever descended from revolutionary loins. 

What do the rebels demand ? First, " that the 
people of the United States. shall have an equal 
right to emigrate and settle in the present or 
any future acquired territories, with whatever 
property they may possess (including slaves), 
and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoy- 
ment until such Territory may be admitted as a 
State into the Union, with or without slavery, 
as she may determine, on an equality with all 
existing States." That is our territorial de- 
mand. We have fought for this Territory when 
blood was its price. We have paid for it when 
gold was its price. We have not proposed to 
exclude you, though you have contributed very 
little of blood or money. I refer especially to 
New England. We demand only to go into 
those Territories upon terms of equality with 
you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to 
enjoy the common property of the whole Union, 
and receive the protection of the common gov- 
ernment, until the Territory is capable of com- 
ing into the Union as a sovereign State, when 
it may fix its own institutions to suit itself. 

The second proposition is, " that property in 
slaves shall be entitled to the same protection 



secession: 93 

from the Government of the United States, in 
all of its departments, everywhere, which the 
Constitution confers the power upon it to extend 
to any other property, provided nothing herein 
contained shall be construed to limit or restrain 
the right now belonging to every State to pro- 
hibit, abolish, or establish and protect slavery' 
within its limits." We demand of the common 
government to use its granted powers to pro- 
tect our property as well as yours. For this 
protection we nay as much as you do. This 
very property is subject to taxation. It has 
been taxed by you and sold by you for taxes. 
The title to thousands and tens of thousands of 
slaves is derived from the United States. We 
claim that the Government, while the Constitu- 
tion recognizes our property for the purposes of 
taxation, shall give it the same protection that 
it gives yours. Ought it not to be so ? You say 
no. Every one of you upon the committee 
said no. Your Senators say no. Your House 
of Representatives says no. Throughout the 
length and breadth of your conspiracy against 
the Constitution, there is but one shout of no ! 
This recognition of this right is the price of my 
allegiance. Withhold it, and you do not get 
my obedience. This is the philosophy of the 



94 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

armed men who have sprung up in this country. 
Do you ask me to support a government that 
will tax my property ; that will plunder me ; 
that will demand my blood, and will not protect 
me ? I would rather see the population of my 
native State laid six feet beneath her sod than 
they should support for one hour such a gov- 
ernment. Protection is the price of obedience 
everywhere, in all countries. It is the only 
thing that makes government respectable. 
Deny it and you cannot have free subjects or 
citizens ; you may have slaves. 

We demand, in the next place, " that persons 
committing crimes against slave property in one 
State, and fleeing to another, shall be delivered 
up in the same manner as persons committing 
crimes against other property, and that the laws 
of the State from which such persons flee shall 
be the test of criminality." That is another 
one of the demands of an extremist and rebel. 
The Constitution of the United States, article 
four, section two, says : 

" A person charged in any State with treason, 
felony, or other crime, who shall flee from jus- 
tice and be found in another State, shall, on 
demand of the executive authority of the State 
from which he fled, be delivered up to be 



SECESSION. 95 

removed to the State having jurisdiction of 
the crime." But the non-slave-holding States, 
treacherous to their oaths and compacts, have 
steadily refused, if the criminal only stole a 
negro, and that negro was a slave, to deliver 
him up. It was refused twice on the requisi- 
tion of my own State as long as twenty-two 
years ago. It was refused by Kent and by 
Fairfield, Governors of Maine, and representing, 
I believe, each of the then Federal parties. 
We appealed then to fraternity, but we sub- 
mitted ; and this constitutional right has been 
practically a dead letter from that day to this. 
The next case came up between us and the 
State of New York, when the present senior 
Senator (Mr. Seward) was the Governor of that 
State; and he refused it. Why? He said it 
was not against the laws of New York to steal a 
negro, and therefore he would not comply with 
the demand. He made a similar refusal to 
Virginia. Yet these are our confederates ; 
these are our sister States ! There is the bar- 
gain ; there is the compact. You have sworn 
to it. Both these Governors swore to it. The 
Senator from New York swore to it. The 
Governor of Ohio swore to it when he was 
inaugurated. You cannot bind them by oaths. 



g6 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

Yet they talk to us of treason ; and I suppose 
they expect to whip freemen into loving such 
brethren ! They will have a good time in do- 
ing it ! 

It is natural we should want this provision 
of the Constitution carried out. The Constitu- 
tion says slaves are property; the Supreme 
Court says so ; the Constitution says so. The 
theft of slaves is a crime ; they are a subject- 
matter of felonious asportation. By the text 
and letter of the Constitution you agreed to give 
them up. You have sworn to do it, and you 
have broken your oaths. Of course, those who 
have done so look out for pretexts. Nobody ex- 
pected them do otherwise. I do not think I 
ever saw a perjurer, however bald and naked, 
who could not invent some pretext to palliate 
his crime, or who could not, for fifteen shillings, 
hire an Old Bailey lawyer to invent some for 
him. Yet this requirement of the Constitution 
is another one of the extreme demands of an 
extremist and a rebel. 

The next stipulation is that fugitive slaves 
shall be surrendered under the provisions of the 
fugitive-slave act of 1850, without being entitled 
either to a writ of habeas corpus, or trial by 
jury, or other similar obstructions of legislation, 



SECESSION. 97 

in the State to which he may flee. Here is 
the Constitution : 

" No person held to service or labor in one 
State, under the laws thereof, escaping into an- 
other, shall, in consequence of any law or regu- 
lation therein, be discharged from such service 
or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of 
the party to whom such service or labor may be 
due." 

This language is plain, and everybody under- 
stood it the same way for the first forty years 
of your government. In 1793, in Washington's 
time, an act was passed to carry out this pro- 
vision. It was adopted unanimously in the 
Senate of the United States, and nearly so in 
the House of Representatives. Nobody then 
had invented pretexts to show that the Consti- 
tution did not mean a negro slave. It was 
clear ; it was plain. Not only the Federal 
courts, but all the local courts in all the States, 
decide that this was a constitutional obligation. 
How is it now? The North sought to evade 
it ; following the instincts of their natural char- 
acter, they commenced with the fraudulent fic- 
tion that fugitives were entitled to habeas cor- 
pus, entitled to trial by jury in the State to 
which they fled. They pretended to believe 



98 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

that our fugitive slaves were entitled to more 
rights than their white citizens ; perhaps they 
were right, they know one another better than 
I do. You may charge a white man with trea- 
son, or felony, or other crime, and you do not 
require any trial by jury before he is given up ; 
there is nothing to determine but that he is 
legally charged with a crime and that he fled, 
and then he is to be delivered up upon demand. 
White people are delivered up every day in this 
way ; but not slaves. Slaves, black people, you 
say, are entitled to trial by jury ; and in this 
way schemes have been invented to defeat your 
plain constitutional obligations. * * * 

The next demand made on behalf of the South 
is, " that Congress shall pass effective laws for 
the punishment of all persons in any of the 
States who shall in any manner aid and abet 
invasion or insurrection in any other State, or 
commit any other act against the laws of na- 
tions, tending to disturb the tranquillity of the 
people or government of any other State." 
That is a very plain principle. The Constitu- 
tion of the United States now requires, and 
gives Congress express power, to define and 
punish piracies and felonies committed on the 
high seas, and offences against the laws of no- 



SECESSION. 99 

ttons. When the honorable and distinguished 
Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) last year 
introduced a bill for the purpose of punishing 
people thus offending under that clause of the 
Constitution, Mr. Lincoln, in his speech at 
New York, which I have before me, declared 
that it was a "sedition bill"; his press and 
party hooted at it. So far from recognizing 
the bill as intended to carry out the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, it received their 
jeers and jibes. The Black Republicans of 
Massachusetts elected the admirer and eulogist 
of John Brown's courage as their governor, 
and we may suppose he will throw no impedi- 
ments in the way of John Brown's successors. 
The epithet applied to the bill of the Senator 
from Illinois is quoted from a deliberate speech 
delivered by Lincoln in New York, for which, 
it was stated in the journals, according to some 
resolution passed by an association of his own 
party, he was paid a couple of hundred dollars. 
The speech should therefore have been delib- 
erate. Lincoln denounced that bill. He places 
the stamp of his condemnation upon a measure 
intended to promote the peace and security of 
confederate States. He is, therefore, an enemy 
of the human race, and deserves the execration 
of all mankind. 



lOO ROBERT TOOMBS. 

We demand these five propositions. Are 
they not right? Are they not just? Take 
them in detail, and show that they are not 
warranted by the Constitution, by the safety 
of our people, by the principles of eternal jus- 
tice. We will pause and consider them ; but 
mark me, we will not let you decide the ques- 
tion for us. * * * 

Senators, the Constitution is a compact. It 
contains all our obligations and the duties of the 
Federal Government. I am content and have 
ever been content to sustain it. While I doubt 
its perfection, while I do not believe it was a 
good compact, and while I never saw the day 
that I would have voted for it as a proposition 
de 710V0, yet I am bound to it by oath and by 
that common prudence which would induce 
men to abide by established forms rather than 
to rush into unknown dangers. I have given 
to it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering sup- 
port and allegiance, but I choose to put that 
allegiance on the true ground, not on the false 
idea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I 
say that the Constitution is the whole compact. 
All the obligations, all the chains that fetter 
the limbs of my people, are nominated in the 
bond, and they wisely excluded any conclusion 



SECESSION. lor 

against them, by declaring that " the powers 
not granted by the Constitution to the United 
States, or forbidden by it to the States, be- 
longed to the States respectively or the peo- 
ple." Now I will try it by that standard ; I 
will subject it to that test. The law of nature, 
the law of justice, would say — and it is so ex- 
pounded by the publicists — that equal rights in 
the common property shall be enjoyed. Even 
in a monarchy the king cannot prevent the 
subjects from enjoying equality in the disposi- 
tion of the public property. Even in a despotic 
government this principle is recognized. It 
was the blood and the money of the whole 
people (says the learned Grotius, and say all 
the publicists) which acquired the public prop- 
erty, and therefore it is not the property of the 
sovereign. This right of equality being, then, 
according to justice and natural equity, a right 
belonging to all States, when did we give it 
up ? You say Congress has a right to pass 
rules and regulations concerning the Territory 
and other property of the United States. Very 
well. Does that exclude those whose blood 
and money paid for it? Does ''dispose of" 
mean to rob the rightful owners? You must 
show a better title than that, or a better sword 
than we have. 



I02 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

But, you say, try the right. I agree to it. 
But how ? By our judgment? No, not until 
the last resort. What then ; by yours ? No, 
not until the same time. How then try it ? 
The South has always said, by the Supreme 
Court. But that is in our favor, and Lincoln 
says he will not stand that judgment. Then 
each must judge for himself of the mode and 
manner of redress. But you deny us that privi- 
lege, and finally reduce us to accepting your 
judgment. The Senator from Kentucky comes 
to your aid, and says he can find no constitu- 
tional right of secession. Perhaps not ; but the 
Constitution is not the place to look for State 
rights. If that right belongs to independent 
States, and they did not cede it to the Federal 
Government, it is reserved to the States, or to 
the people. Ask your new commentator where 
he gets the right to judge for us. Is it in the 
bond ? 

The Northern doctrine was, many years ago, 
that the Supreme Court was the judge. That 
was their doctrine in 1800. They denounced 
Madison for the report of 1799, on the Virginia 
resolutions ; they denounced Jefferson for 
framing the Kentucky resolutions, because they 
were presumed to impugn the decisions of the 



SECESSION. 103 

Supreme Court of the United States ; and they 
declared that that court was made, by the Con- 
stitution, the ultimate and supreme arbiter. 
That was the universal judgment — the declara- 
tion of every free State in this Union, in answer 
to the Virginia resolutions of 1798, or of all 
who did answer, even including the State of 
Delaware, then under Federal control. 

The Supreme Court have decided that, by 
the Constitution, we have a right to go to the 
Territories and be protected there with our 
property. You say, we cannot decide the com- 
pact for ourselves. Well, can the Supreme 
Court decide it for us? Mr. Lincoln says he 
does not care what the Supreme Court decides, 
he will turn us out anyhow. He says this in 
his debate with the honorable member from Il- 
linois [Mr. Douglas]. I have it before me. He 
said he would vote against the decision of the 
Supreme Court. Then you did not accept that 
arbiter. You will not take my construction ; 
you will not take the Supreme Court as an ar- 
biter ; you will not take the practice of the 
government ; you will not take the treaties un- 
der Jefferson and Madison ; you will not take 
the opinion of Madison upon the very question 
of prohibition in 1820. What, then, will you 



I04 ROBERT TOOMBS. 

take ? You will take nothing but your own 
judgment ; that is, you will not only judge for 
yourselves, not only discard the court, discard 
our construction, discard the practice of the 
government, but you will drive us out, simply 
because you will it. Come and do it ! You 
have sapped the foundations of society; you 
have destroyed almost all hope of peace. In a 
compact where there is no common arbiter, 
where the parties finally decide for themselves, 
the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not 
the constitutional, arbiter. Your party says 
that you will not take the decision of the Su- 
preme Court. You said so at Chicago ; you 
said so in committee ; every man of you in both 
Houses says so. What are you going to do? 
You say we shall submit to your construction. 
We shall do it, if you can make us ; but not 
otherwise, or in any other manner. That is 
settled. You may call it secession, or you may 
call it revolution ; but there is a big fact stand- 
ing before you, ready to oppose you — that fact 
is, freemen with arms in their hands. The cry 
of the Union will not disperse them ; we have 
passed that point ; they demand equal rights ; 
you had better heed the demand. 



JOHN PARKER HALE, 

OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

(born 1806, DIED 1873.) 



ON SECESSION ; MODERATE REPUBLICAN OPINION ; 
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, DECEMBER 5, 
i860. 

Mr. President : 

I was very much in hopes when the message 
was presented that it would be a document 
which would commend itself cordially to some- 
body. I was not so sanguine about its pleasing 
myself, but I was in hopes that it would be one 
thing or another. I was in hopes that the 
President would have looked in the face the 
crisis in which he says the country is, and that 
his message would be either one thing or an- 
other. But, sir, I have read it somewhat care- 
fully. I listened to it as it was read at the 
desk ; and, if I understand it — and I think I 
do — it is this : South Carolina has just cause 
for seceding from the Union ; that is the first 
105 



I06 JOHN PARKER HALE. 

proposition. The second is, that she has no 
right to secede. The third is, that we have no 
right to prevent her from seceding. That is 
the President's message, substantially. He 
goes on to represent this as a great and power- 
ful country, and that no State has a right to 
secede from it ; but the power of the country, 
if I understand the President, consists in what 
Dickens makes the English constitution to be — 
a power to do nothing at all. 

Now, sir, I think it was incumbent upon the 
President of the United States to point out 
definitely and recommend to Congress some 
rule of action, and to tell us what he recom- 
mended us to do. But, in my judgment, he 
has entirely avoided it. He has failed to look 
the thing in the face. He has acted like 
the ostrich, which hides her head and thereby 
thinks to escape danger. Sir, the only way to 
escape danger is to look it in the face. I think 
the country did expect from the President some 
exposition of a decided policy ; and I confess 
that, for one, I was rather indifferent as to what 
that policy was that he recommended ; but I 
hoped that it would be something ; that it 
would be decisive. He has utterly failed in 
that respect. 



SECESSION. 107 

I think we may as well look this matter 
right clearly in the face ; and I am not going to 
be long about doing it. I think that this state 
of affairs looks to one of two things : it looks 
to absolute submission, not on the part of our 
Southern friends and the Southern States, but 
of the North, to the abandonment of their po- 
sition, — it looks to a surrender of that popular 
sentiment which has been uttered through the 
constituted forms of the ballot-box, or it looks 
to open war. We need not shut our eyes to 
the fact. It means war, and it means nothing 
else ; and the State which has put herself in 
the attitude of secession, so looks upon it. She 
has asked no council, she has considered it as a 
settled question, and she has armed herself. 
As I understand the aspect of affairs, it looks 
to that, and it looks to nothing else except un- 
conditional submission on the part of the ma- 
jority. I did not read the paper — I do not read 
many papers — but I understand that there 
was a remedy suggested in a paper printed, I 
think, in this city, and it was that the President 
and the Vice-President should be inaugurated 
(that would be a great concession !) and then, 
being inaugurated, they should quietly resign ! 
Well, sir, I am not entirely certain that that 



I08 JOHN PARKER HALE. 

would settle the question. I think that after 
the President and Vice-President-elect had re- 
signed, there would be as much difficulty in set- 
tling who was to take their places as there was 
in settling it before. 

I do not wish, sir, to say a word that shall 
increase any irritation ; that shall add any feel- 
ing of bitterness to the state of things which 
really exists in the country, and I would bear 
and forbear before I would say any thhig which 
would add to this bitterness. But I tell you, 
sir, the plain, true way is to look this thing in 
the face — see where we are. And I avow here 
— I do not know whether or not I shall be sus- 
tained by those who usually act with me — if 
the issue which is presented is that the consti- 
tutional will of the public opinion of this coun- 
try, expressed through the forms of the Consti- 
tution, will not be submitted to, and war is the 
alternative, let it come in any form or in any 
shape. The Union is dissolved and it cannot 
be held together as a Union, if that is the al- 
ternative upon which we go into an election. 
If it is pre-announced and determined that the 
voice of the majority, expressed through the 
regular and constituted forms of the Constitu- 
tion, will not be submitted to, then, sir, this is 



SECESSION. - 109 

not a Union of equals ; it is a Union of a dic- 
tatorial oligarchy on one side, and a herd of 
slaves and cowards on the other. That is it, 
sir; nothing more, nothing less. 



THADDEUS STEVENS, 

OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

(born 1792, DIED 1868.) 



ON SECESSION ; RADICAL REPUBLICAN OPINION ; IN 
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANU- 
ARY 29, 1861. 

The secession and rebellion of the South 
have been inculcated as a doctrine for twenty 
years past among slave-holding communities. 
At one time the tariff was deemed a sufficient 
cause ; then the exclusion of slavery from free 
Territories ; then some violation of the fugitive- 
slave law. Now the culminating cause is the 
election of a President who does not believe in 
the benefits of slavery, or approve of that great 
missionary enterprise, the slave-trade. The 
truth is all these things are mere pretences. 
The restless spirits of the South desire to have 
a slave empire, and they use these things as 
excuses. Some of them desire a more brilliant 
and stronger government than a republic. 
Their domestic institutions and the social 



SECESSION. 1 1 1 

inequality of their free people naturally pre- 
pare them for a monarchy surrounded by a 
lordly nobility — for a throne founded on the 
neck of labor. 

The men now on the stage of action must 
determine whether they have courage enough 
to maintain the institutions which their fathers 
gave them. This is a great responsibility, but 
in my judgment not a difficult one. I would 
certainly not advise the shedding of American 
blood, except as a last resort. If it should be- 
come necessary, I see no difficulty, with the or- 
dinary forces of the United States, to dissipate 
the rebels, whether of high or low degree. 

But before a resort to arms the ordinary tri- 
bunals of the country should be tried. There 
are laws against treason, misprision of treason, 
murder, and sedition. Many citizens will in- 
quire : Dare we violate these laws ? Dare we 
commit these crimes ? Shall we not finally be 
overtaken by vengeance ? I do not say that a 
State can commit treason. Corporations can- 
not be hanged. But if a State pass treasonable 
acts, and individuals attempt to execute them, 
and thus come in armed collision with the gov^- 
ernment, they will be guilty of treason, and the 
State enactments will be no shield, for they will 
be nullities. 



112 THADDEUS STEVENS. 

I am aware that the most guilty would be the 
most likely to escape the proper punishment. 
The legislators who decreed the conflict and 
ordered the rebellion would not be apt to be 
present at the overt act. The civilians would 
be in council ; the soldiers in battle. The 
passing seditious laws merely, and ordering 
others to execute them — although moral trea- 
son and misprision of treason — is not, in my 
judgment, treason. "Treason against the 
United States consists only in levying war 
against them, or in adhering to their enemies, 
giving them aid and comfort. " In England, 
even after her great conservative act, the stat- 
ute of treason, it was not necessary to be pres- 
ent at the overt act or so near as to be able 
to give physical aid. Conspiring, plotting, and 
counselling others to do the act, although at a 
distance, made them principals in treason ; for 
by the common law those who encouraged, ad- 
vised, or contrived the act, or who gave aid to 
the felon after the act, were accessories In 
felonies ; but as there could be no accessories 
in treason, the common law converted such as 
would have been accessories in felonies into 
principals in treason. But we have no common 
law ; and those only are traitors who potentially 



SECESSION. 113 

committed the overt act. Under our Constitu- 
tion there is neither constructive nor accessorial 
treason. 

South CaroHna (and when I speak of South 
CaroHna I mean to include under that name 
all seceding States, to avoid prolixity, and thus 
what I say of her shall apply to all that have 
seceded or may secede) has, with others, de- 
clared herself out of the Union ; and no doubt 
fancies that she is so. What ought to be done ? 
Send no armies there to wage civil war, as 
alarmists pretend. The general government 
should annul all postal laws within her terri- 
tory, and stop the mails at the line of the 
State. Let the revenue laws be executed, and 
the money paid into the Treasury ; it will help 
to pay the expenses caused by the refractory 
member, and leave the new empire to direct 
taxation to support their great burden. How 
long the people will submit to this cannot be 
told to a mathematical certainty. Not long, I 
predict. 

If the revenue could not be thus collected, 
and smuggling prevented, the government 
should abolish all laws establishing ports of 
entry and collection districts within the seced- 
ing States, and prevent all vessels, foreign or 



114 THADDEUS STEVENS. 

domestic, from entering or leaving any of their 
ports. How will she send her cotton and 
other surplus products abroad ? She cannot 
load a vessel in her own harbors, for there are 
no national ofificers to give her a clearance. 
The vessel would be without papers, without 
nationality, and a prize to the first captor. 
How forlorn must be her condition ! Without 
commerce, without industry, her seaports would 
be barren wastes. With a flag recognized by 
no civilized nation ; with no vessel entering 
her ports, except now and then a low black 
schooner scudding in from the river Congo ; 
with no ally or sympathizer except the king of 
Dahomey. 

If these States will have war, who is to pro- 
tect them against their own domestic foes? 
They now tremble when a madman and a score 
of followers invade them. If a citizen declare 
his opposition to slavery, they hang him ; and 
declare, as a justification, that it is necessary 
for their personal safety ; because they say 
they are standing on the thin crust of a raging 
volcano, which the least jar will crack, and 
plunge them in. How, then, will it withstand 
the booming of cannon and the clash of arms ? 

Sir, the attempt of one or more of these cot- 



SECESSION. 1 1 5 

ton States to force this government to dissolve 
the Union is absurd. Those who counsel the 
government to let them go, and destroy the 
national Union, are preaching moral treason. I 
can understand such doctrine from those who 
conscientiously dislike a partnership in slave- 
holding — who desire to see this empire severed 
along the black line, so that they could live in 
a free republic. Let no slave State flatter itself 
that it can dissolve the Union now, and then 
reconstruct it on better terms. The present 
Constitution was formed in our weakness. Some 
of its compromises were odious, and have be- 
come more so by the unexpected increase of 
slaves, who were expected soon to run out. 
But now, in our strength, the conscience of the 
North would not allow them to enter into such 
partnership with slave-holding. If this Union 
be dissolved, its reconstruction would embrace 
one empire wholly slave-holding, or one republic 
wholly free. While we will religiously observe 
the present compact, not attempt to be ab- 
solved from it, yet if it should be torn to pieces 
by rebels, our next United States will contain 
no foot of ground on which a slave can tread, 
no breath of air which a slave can breathe. 
Then we can boast of liberty. Then we can 



Il6 TH A DDE us STEVENS. 

rise and expand to the full stature of untram- 
melled freemen, and hope for God's blessings. 
Then the bondmen who break their chains will 
find a city of refuge. Our neighboring slave 
empire must consider how it will affect their 
peculiar institution. They will be surrounded 
by freedom, with the civilized world scowling 
upon them. 

Much as I dislike the responsibility and re- 
proach of slavery, I recoil from such a remedy. 
Let us be patient, faithful to all constitutional 
engagements, and await the time of the Dis- 
poser of events. Let us not destroy this grand 
fabric of freedom, which, when once dissolved, 
will never be rebuilt. Let there be no blood 
shed until the last moment ; but let no cowardly 
counsels unnerve the people ; and then, at 
last, if needs be, let every one be ready to gird 
on his armor, and do his duty. 



SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX, 

OF OHIO. 
(born 1824.) 



ON SECESSION ; DOUGLAS DEMOCRATIC OPINION ; 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

JANUARY 14, 1861. 

Mr. Chairman : 

I speak from and for the capital of the great- 
est of the States of the great West. That po- 
tential section is beginning to be appalled at the 
colossal strides of revolution. It has immense 
interests at stake in this Union, as well from its 
position as its power and patriotism. We have 
had infidelity to the Union before, but never in 
such a fearful shape. We had it in the East dur- 
ing the late war with England. Even so late 
as the admission of Texas, Massachusetts re- 
solved herself out of the Union. That resolu- 
tion has never been repealed, and one would 
infer, from much of her conduct, that she did 
not regard herself as bound by our covenant. 
Since 1856, in the North, we have had infidelity 
"7 



Il8 SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX. 

to the Union, more insidious infractions of the 
Constitution than by open rebelHon. Now, sir, 
as a consequence, in part, of these very infrac- 
tions, we have rebellion itself, open and daring, 
in terrific proportions, with dangers so formida- 
ble as to seem almost remediless. 

I would not exaggerate the fearful conse- 
quences of dissolution. It is the breaking up 
of a federative Union, but it is not like the 
breaking up of society. It is not anarchy. A 
link may fall from the chain, and the link may 
still be perfect, though the chain have lost its 
length and its strength. In the uniformity of 
commercial regulations, in matters of war and 
peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, 
coinage, copyrights, tariff, and other Federal 
and national affairs, this great government may 
be broken ; but in most of the essential lib- 
erties and rights which government is the 
agent to establish and protect, the seceding 
State has no revolution, and the remaining 
States can have none. This arises from that re- 
finement of our polity which makes the States 
the basis of our instituted labor. Greece 
was broken by the Persian power, but her mu- 
nicipal institutions remained. Hungary lost 
her national crown, but her home institutions 



SECESSION. 119 

remain. South Carolina may preserve her con- 
stituted domestic authority, but she must be 
content to glimmer obscurely remote rather 
than shine and revolve in a constellated band. 
She even goes out by the ordinance of a so- 
called sovereign convention, content to lose by 
her isolation that youthful, vehement, exultant, 
progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY ! 
She foregoes the hopes, the boasts, the flag, the 
music, all the emotions, all the traits, and all 
the energies which, when combined in our 
United States, have won our victories in war 
and our miracles of national advancement. 
Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugu- 
ral, regretfully " looks back upon the inheri- 
tance South Carolina had in the common 
glories and triumphant power of this wonderful 
confederacy, and fails to find language to ex- 
press the feelings of the human heart as he 
turns from the contemplation." The ties of 
brotherhood, interest, lineage, and history are 
all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a 
South Carolinian with the " idem sentejitiavi de 
rcpiiblica,'' which makes unity and nationality. 
What 2, prestige and glory are here dimmed and 
lost in the contaminated reason of man ! 

Can we realize it ? Is it a masquerade, to 



I20 SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX. 

last for a night, or a reality to be dealt with, 
with the world's rough passionate handling? 
It is sad and bad enough ; but let us not over- 
tax our anxieties about it as yet. It is not 
the sanguinary regimen of the French revolu- 
tion ; not the rule of assignats and guillotine ; 
not the cry of '' Vivent Ics Ro7igcs ! A mort Ics 
gendarmes ! " but as yet, I hope I may say, the 
peaceful attempt to withdraw from the burdens 
and benefits of the Republic. Thus it is unlike 
every other revolution. Still it is revolution. 
It may, according as it is managed, involve 
consequences more terrific than any revolution 
since government began. 

If the Federal Government is to be main- 
tained, its strength must not be frittered away 
by conceding the theory of secession. To con- 
cede secession as a right, is to make its path- 
way one of roses and not of thorns. I would 
not make its pathway so easy. If the govern- 
ment has any strength for its own preservation, 
the people demand it should be put forth in its 
civil and moral forces. Dealing, however, with 
a sensitive public sentiment, in which this 
strength reposes, it must not be rudely exer- 
cised. It should be the iron hand in the glove 
of velvet. Firmness should be allied with kind- 



SECESSION. 121 

ness. Power should assert its own prerogative, 
but in the name of law and love. If these 
elements are not thus blended in our policy, as 
the Executive proposes, our government will 
prove either a garment of shreds or a coat of 
mail. We want neither. * * * 

Before we enter upon a career of force, let us 
exhaust every effort at peace. Let us seek to 
excite love in others by the signs of love in our- 
selves. Let there be no needless provocation 
and strife. Let every reasonable attempt at 
compromise be considered. Otherwise we have 
a terrible alternative. War, in this age and in 
this country, sir, should be the ultima ratio. 
Indeed, it may well be questioned whether 
there is any reason in it for war. What a war ! 
Endless in its hate, without truce and without 
mercy. If it ended ever, it would only be 
after a fearful struggle ; and then with a heri- 
tage of hate which would forever forbid har- 
mony. * * * 

Small States and great States ; new States 
and old States ; slave States and free States ; 
Atlantic States and Pacific States ; gold and 
silver States ; iron and copper States ; grain 
States and lumber States ; river States and 
lake States ; — all having varied interests and 



122 SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX. 

advantages, would seek superiority in armed 
strength. Pride, animosity, and glory would 
inspire every movement. God shield our coun- 
try from such a fulfilment of the prophecy of 
the revered founders of the Union ! Our strug- 
gle would be no short, sharp struggle. Law, 
and even religion herself, would become false 
to their divine purpose. Their voice would no 
longer be the voice of God, but of his enemy. 
Poverty, ignorance, oppression, and its hand- 
maid, cowardice, breaking out into merciless 
cruelty ; slaves false ; freemen slaves, and so- 
ciety itself poisoned at the cradle and dis- 
honored at the grave ; — its life, now so full of 
blessings, would be gone with the life of a 
fraternal and united Statehood. What sacri- 
fice is too great to prevent such a calamity? 
Is such a picture overdrawn ? Already its out- 
lines appear. What means the inaugural of 
Governor Pickens, when he says : " From the 
position we may occupy toward the Northern 
States, as well as from our own internal struc- 
ture of society, the government may, from 
necessity^ become strongly military in its organi- 
zation " ? What mean the minute-men of Gov- 
ernor Wise? What the Southern boast that 
they have a rifle or shot-gun to each family? 



SECESSION. 123 

What means the Pittsburgh mob? What this 
alacrity to save Forts Moultrie and Pinckney? 
What means the boast of the Southern men of 
being the best-armed people in the world, not 
counting the two hundred thousand stand of 
United States arms stored in Southern arsenals? 
Already Georgia has her arsenals, with eighty 
thousand muskets. What mean these lavish 
grants of money by Southern Legislatures to 
buy more arms? What mean these rumors of 
arms and force on the Mississippi? ^ * ^ 

Mr. Speaker, he alone is just to his country; 
he alone has a mind unwarped by section, and 
a memory unparalyzed by fear, who warns 
against precipitancy. He who could hurry this 
nation to the rash wager of battle is not fit to 
Jiold the seat of legislation. What can justify 
the breaking up of our institutions into bel- 
ligerent fractions ? Better this marble Capitol 
were levelled to the dust ; better were this Con- 
gress struck dead in its deliberations; better 
an immolation of every ambition and passion 
which here have met to shake the foundations 
of society than the hazard of these conse- 
quences ! * * * I appeal to Southern men, 
who contemplate a step so fraught with hazard 
and strife, to pause. Clouds are about us! 



124 SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX. 

There is lightning- in their frown ! Cannot 
we direct it harmlessly to the earth ? The 
morning and evening prayer of the people I 
speak for in such weakness rises in strength to 
that Supreme Ruler who, in noticing the fall of 
a sparrow, cannot disregard the fall of a nation, 
that our States may continue to be as they 
have been — 07ie ; one in the unreserve of a 
mingled national being ; one as the thought of 
God is one ! 



VII. 

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUC- 
TION. 



VII. 

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

The transformation of the original secession 
movement into a de facto nationality made war 
inevitable, but acts of war had already taken 
place, with or without State authority. Seizures 
of forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, and 
navy yards, and captures of Federal troops, had 
completely extinguished the authority of the 
JUnited States in the secession area, except at 
Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and Fort 
Pickens and the forts at Key West in Florida ; 
and active operations to reduce these had been 
begun. When an attempt was made, late in 
January, 1861, to provision Fort Sumter, the 
provision steamer. Star of the West, was fired 
on by the South Carolina batteries and driven 
back. Nevertheless, the Buchanan administra- 
127 



128 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

tion succeeded in keeping the peace until its 
constitutional expiration in March, i86i, al- 
though the rival and irreconcilable administra- 
tion at Montgomery was busily engaged in 
securing its exclusive authority in the seceding 
States. 

Neither of the two incompatible administra- 
tions was anxious to strike the first blow. Mr. 
Lincoln's administration began with the policy 
outlined in his inaugural address, that of insist- 
ing on collection of the duties on imports, and 
avoiding all other irritating measures. Mr. 
Seward, Secretary of State, even talked of com- 
pensating for the loss of the seceding States by 
'admissions from Canada and elsewhere. The 
urgent needs of Fort Sumter, however, soon 
forced an attempt to provision it ; and this 
brought on a general attack upon it by the 
Confederate batteries around it. After a bom- 
bardment of two days, and a vigorous defence 
by the fort, in which no one was killed on either 
side, the fort surrendered, April 14, 1861. It 
was now impossible for the United States to 



CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 1 29 

ignore the Confederate States any longer. 
President Lincoln issued a call for volunteers, 
and a proclamation announcing a blockade of 
the coast of the seceding States. A similar call 
on the other side and the issue of letters of 
marque and reprisal against the commerce of 
the United States were followed by an act of 
the Confederate Congress formally recognizing 
the existence of war with the United States. 
The two powers were thus locked in a struggle 
for life or death, the Confederate States fight- 
ing for existence and recognition, the United 
States for the maintenance of recognized 
boundaries and jurisdiction ; the Confederate 
States claiming to be at war with a foreign 
power, the United States to be engaged in the 
suppression of individual resistance to the laws. 
The event was to decide between the opposing 
claims ; and it was certain that the event must 
be the absolute extinction of either the Con- 
federate States or the United States within the 
area of secession. 

President Lincoln called Congress together 



130 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

in special session, July 4, 1861 ; and Congress 
at once undertook to limit the scope of the war 
in regard to two most important points, slavery 
and State rights. Resolutions passed both 
Houses, by overwhelming majorities, that 
slavery in the seceding States was not to be in- 
terfered with, that the autonomy of the States 
themselves was to be strictly maintained, and 
that, when the Union was made secure, the war 
ought to cease. If the war had ended in that 
month, these resolutions would have been of 
some value ; every month of the extension of 
the war made them of less value. They were 
repeatedly offered afterward from the Demo- 
cratic side, but were as regularly laid on the 
table. Their theory, however, continued to 
control the Democratic policy to the end of 
the war. 

For a time the original policy was to all ap- 
pearance unaltered. The war was against indi- 
viduals only ; and peace was to be made with 
individuals only, the States remaining un- 
touched, but the Confederate States being 



CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 131 

blotted out in the process. The only requisite 
to recognition of a seceding State was to be the 
discovery of enough loyal or pardoned citizens 
to set its machinery going again. Thus the 
delegates from the forty western counties of 
Virginia were recognized as competent to give 
the assent of Virginia to the erection of the new 
State of West Virginia ; and the Senators and 
Representatives of the new State actually sat in 
judgment on the reconstruction of the parent 
State, although the legality of the parent gov- 
ernment was the evident measure of the consti- 
tutional existence of the new State. Such 
inconsistencies were the natural results of the 
changes forced upon the Federal policy by the 
events of the war, as it grew wider and more 
desperate. 

The first of these changes was the inevitable 
attack upon slavery. The labor system of the 
seceding States was a mark so tempting that 
no belligerent should have been seriously ex- 
pected to have refrained from aiming at it. 
January i, 1863, after one hundred days' notice, 



132 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

President Lincoln issued his Emancipation 
Proclamation, freeing the slaves within the 
enemy's lines as rapidly as the Federal arms 
should advance. This one break in the original 
policy involved, as possible consequences, all 
the ultimate steps of reconstruction. Read- 
mission was no longer to be a simple restora- 
tion ; abolition of slavery was to be a condition- 
precedent which the government could never 
abandon. If the President could impose such 
a condition, who was to put bounds to the 
power of Congress to impose limitations on its 
part ? The President had practically declared, 
contrary to the original policy, that the war 
should continue until slavery was abolished ; 
what was to hinder Congress from declaring 
that the war should continue until, in its judg- 
ment, the last remnants of the Confederate 
States were satisfactorily blotted out ? This, 
in effect, was the basis of reconstruction, as 
finally carried out. The steady opposition of 
the Democrats only made the final terms the 
harder. 



CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 1 33 

The principle urged consistently from the 
beginning of the war by Thaddeus Stevens, of 
Pennsylvania, was that serious resistance to the 
Constitution implied the suspension of the 
Constitution in the area of resistance. No 
one, he insisted, could truthfully assert that the 
Constitution of the United States was then in 
force in South Carolina ; why should Congress 
be bound by the Constitution in matters con- 
nected with South Carolina? If the resistance 
should be successful, the suspension of the 
Constitution would evidently be perpetual ; 
Congress alone could decide when the resist- 
ance had so far ceased that the operations of 
the Constitution could be resumed. The 
terms of readmission were thus to be laid down 
by Congress. To much the same effect was 
the different theory of Charles Sumner, of 
Massachusetts. While he held that the seced- 
ing States could not remove themselves from 
the national jurisdiction, except by successful 
war, he maintained that no Territory was oblig- 
ed to become a State, and that no State was 



134 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

obliged to remain a State; that the seceding 
States had repudiated their State-hood, had com- 
mitted suicide as States, and had become Terri- 
tories ; and that the powers of Congress to im- 
pose conditions on their readmission were as 
absolute as in the case of other Territories. 
Neither of these theories was finally followed 
out in reconstruction, but both had a strong in- 
fluence on the final process. 

President Lincoln followed the plan subse- 
quently completed by Johnson. The original 
(Pierpont) government of Virginia was recog- 
nized and supported. Similar governments 
were established in Tennessee, Louisiana, and 
Arkansas, and an unsuccessful attempt was 
made to do so in Florida. The amnesty proc- 
lamation of December, 1863, offered to recog- 
nize any State government in the seceding 
States formed by one tenth of the former voters 
who should take the oath of loyalty and sup- 
port of the emancipation measures. At the 
following session of Congress, the first bill pro- 
viding for congressional supervision of the re- 



CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 135 

admission of the seceding States was passed, 
but the President retained it without signing it 
until Congress had adjourned. At the time of 
President Lincoln's assassination Congress was 
not in session, and President Johnson had six 
months in which to complete the work. Pro- 
visional governors were appointed, conventions 
were called, the State constitutions were amend- 
ed by the abolition of slavery and the repudia- 
tion of the war debt, and the ordinances of 
secession were either voided or repealed. When 
Congress met in December, 1865, the work had 
been completed, the new State governments 
were in operation, and the Xlllth Amendment, 
abohshing slavery, had been ratified by aid of 
their votes. Congress, however, still refused to 
admit their Senators or Representatives. The 
first action of many of the new governments 
had been to pass labor, contract, stay, and va- 
grant laws which looked much like a re-estab- 
lishment of slavery, and the majority in Con- 
gress felt that further guarantees for the security 
of the freedmen were necessary before the war 
could be truly said to be over. 



136 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

Early in 1866 President Johnson imprudently 
carried matters into an open quarrel with Con- 
gress, which united the two thirds Republican 
majority in both Houses against him. The 
elections of the autumn of 1866 showed that 
the two thirds majorities were to be continued 
through the next Congress; and in March, 1867, 
the first Reconstruction Act was passed over the 
veto. It declared the existing governments in 
the seceding States to be provisional only; put 
the States under military governors until State 
conventions, elected with negro suffrage and 
excluding the classes named in the proposed 
XlVth Amendment, should form a State gov- 
ernment satisfactory to Congress, and the State 
government should ratify the XlVth Amend- 
ment ; and made this rule of suffrage imperative 
in all elections under the provisional govern- 
ments until they should be readmitted. This 
was a semi-voluntary reconstruction. In the 
same month the new Congress, which met im- 
mediately on the adjournment of its predeces- 
sor, passed a supplementary act. It directed 



CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 137 

the military governors to call the conventions 
before September ist following, and thus en- 
forced an involuntary reconstruction. 

Tennessee had been readmitted in 1866. 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Ala- 
bama, Louisiana, and Arkansas were recon- 
structed under the acts, and were readmitted 
in 1868. Georgia was also readmitted, but was 
remanded again for expelling negro members of 
her Legislature, and came in under the second- 
ary terms. Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and 
Texas, which had refused or broken the first 
terms, were admitted in 1870, on the additional 
terms of ratifying the XVth Amendment, which 
forbade the exclusion of the negroes from the 
elective franchise. 

In Georgia the white voters held control of 
their State from the beginning. In the other 
seceding States the government passed, at vari- 
ous times and by various methods during the 
next six years after 187 1, under control of the 
whites, who still retain control. One of the 
avowed objects of reconstruction has thus 



138 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

failed ; but, to one who does not presume that 
all things will be accomplished at a single leap, 
the scheme, in spite of its manifest blunders 
and crudities, must seem to have had a remark- 
able success. Whatever the political status of 
the negro may now be in the seceding States, 
it may be confidently affirmed that it is far bet- 
ter than it would have been in the same time 
under an unrestricted readmission. The whites, 
all whose energies have been strained to secure 
control of their States, have been glad, in re- 
turn for this success to yield a measure of other 
civil rights to the freedmen, which is already 
fuller than ought to have been hoped for in 
1867, And, as the general elective franchise is 
firmly imbedded in the organic law, its ultimate 
concession will come more easily and gently 
than if it were then an entirely new step. 

During this long period of almost continuous 
exertion of national power there were many 
subsidiary measures, such as the laws authoriz- 
ing the appointment of supervisors for congres- 
sional elections, and the use of Federal troops 



CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 1 39 

as a posse comitatus by Federal supervisors, 
which were not at all in line with the earlier 
theory of the division between Federal and 
State powers. The Democratic party gradually 
abandoned its opposition to reconstruction, ac- 
cepting it as a disagreeable but accomplished 
fact, but kept up and increased its opposition 
to the subsidiary measures. About 1876-7 a 
reaction became evident, whose ultimate results 
are not yet so clear as to make them a part of 
the political history of the country. As some 
example of the spirit of the two opposing 
classes of feeling, two specimens have been ex- 
tracted from the " rider" debates of 1879. 

Foreign affairs are not strictly a part of our 
subject ; but, as going to show one of the dan- 
gerous features of the Civil War, the possibility 
of the success of the secession sentiment in 
England in obtaining the intervention of that 
country, the speech of Mr. Beecher in Liver- 
pool, with the addenda of his audience, has 
been given. 

Finally, the spirit of the new South, whose 



I40 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

paramount ascendency is the hope of that sec- 
tion, is most fitly represented by a sermon of 
President Haygood, of Georgia, in 1880. A 
comparison with the speech of Mr. Toombs, in 
i860, will be a basis for a realization of the 
enormous changes of twenty years. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

OF ILLINOIS. 

(born 1809, DIED 1865.) 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1861. 

Fellow Citizens of the United States : 

In compliance with a custom as old as the 
government itself, I appear before you to ad- 
dress you briefly, and to take in your presence 
the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the 
United States to be taken by the President 
" before he enters on the execution of his of- 
fice." 

I do not consider it necessary at present for 
me to discuss those matters of administration 
about which there is no special anxiety or ex- 
citement. 

Apprehension seems to exist, among the peo- 
ple of the Southern States, that by the ac- 
cession of a Republican administration their 
property and their peace and personal security 
are to be endangered. There never has been 
141 



142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

any reasonable cause for such apprehension. 
Indeed, the most ample evidence to the con- 
trary has all the while existed and been open to 
their inspection. It is found in nearly all the 
published speeches of him who now addresses 
you. I do but quote from one of those speeches 
when I declare that " I have no purpose, di- 
rectly or indirectly, to interfere with the insti- 
stitution of slavery in the States where it exists. 
I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I 
have no inclination to do so." Those who 
nominated and elected me did so with full 
knowledge that I had made this and many 
similar declarations, and had never recanted 
them. And more than this, they placed in the 
platform for my acceptance, and as a law to them- 
selves and to me, the clear and emphatic reso- 
lution which I now read : 

" Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of 
the rights of the States, and especially the 
right of each State to order and control its own 
domestic institutions according to its judg- 
ment exclusively, is essential to the balance 
of power on which the perfection and endur- 
ance of our political fabric depend, and we de- 
nounce the lawless invasion by armed force of 
the soil of any State or Territory, no matter 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 1 43 

under what pretext, as among the gravest of 
crimes." 

I now reiterate these sentiments ; and, in 
doing so, I only press upon the public atten- 
tion the most conclusive evidence of which the 
case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and 
security of no section are to be in any wise en- 
dangered by the now incoming administration. 
I add, too, that all the protection which, consis- 
tently with the Constitution and the laws, can 
be given, will be cheerfully given to all the 
States, when lawfully demanded, for whatever 
cause, as cheerfully to one section as to another. 

There is much controversy about the deliver- 
ing up of fugitives from service or labor. The 
clause I now read is as plainly written in the 
Constitution as any other of its provisions : 

" No person held to service or labor in one 
State, under the laws thereof, escaping into an- 
other, shall, in consequence of any law or regula- 
tion therein, be discharged from such service or 
labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labor may be 
due." 

It is scarcely questioned that this provision 
was intended by those who made it for the re- 
claiming of what we call fugitive slaves ; and 



144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All 
members of Congress swear their support to 
the whole Constitution — to this provision as 
much as any other. To the proposition, then, 
that slaves whose cases come within the terms 
of this clause, " shall be delivered up," their 
oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would 
make the effort in good temper, could they 
not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and 
pass a law by means of which to keep good 
that unanimous oath } 

There is some difference of opinion whether 
this clause should be enforced by National or 
by State authority ; but surely that difference 
is not a very material one. If the slave is to be 
surrendered, it can be of but little consequence 
to him, or to others, by what authority it is 
done. And should any one, in any case, be 
content that his oath should go unkept, on a 
mere unsubstantial controversy as to how it 
shall be kept ? 

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought 
not all the safeguards of liberty known in civ- 
ilized and humane jurisprudence to be intro- 
duced, so that a free man be not, in any case, 
surrendered as a slave ? And might it not be 
well, at the same time, to provide by law for 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 1 45 

the enforcement of that clause of the Consti- 
tution which guarantees that " the citizens 
of each State shall be entitled to all privi- 
leges and immunities of citizens in the several 
States"? 

I take the official oath to-day with no mental 
reservation, and with no purpose to construe 
the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical 
rules. And while I do not choose now to 
specify particular acts of Congress as proper to 
be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much 
safer for all, both in official and private stations, 
to conform to and abide by all those acts which 
stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, 
trusting to find impunity in having them held 
to be unconstitutional. 
^It is seventy-two years since the first inaugu- 
ration of a President under our National Con- 
stitution. During that period, fifteen different 
and greatly distinguished citizens have, in suc- 
cession, administered the Executive branch of 
the government. They have conducted it 
through many perils, and generally with great 
success. Yet, with all this scope for precedent, 
I now enter upon the same task for the brief 
constitutional term of four years, under great 
and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the 



146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is 
now formidably attempted. 

I hold that in contemplation of universal law, 
and of the Constitution, tJie Union of these 
States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if 
not expressed, in the fundamental law of all 
national governments. It is safe to assert 
that no government proper ever had a provi- 
sion in its organic law for its own termination. 
Continue to execute all the express provisions 
of our National Government, and the Union 
will endure forever — it being impossible to 
destroy it, except by some action not provided 
for in the instrument itself. 

Again, if the United States be not a govern- 
ment proper, but an association of States in the 
nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, 
be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties 
who made it ? One party to a contract may 
violate it — break it, so to speak ; but does it 
not require all to lawfully rescind it ? 

Descending from these general principles, we 
find the proposition that, in legal contempla- 
tion, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the 
history of the Union itself. The Union is much 
older than the Constitution. It was formed, in 
fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 1 47 

It was matured and continued by the Declara- 
tion of Independence in 1776. It was further 
matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen 
States expressly plighted and engaged that it 
should be perpetual, by the Articles of Con- 
federation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787, one 
of the declared objects for ordaining and estab- 
lishing the Constitution was "to form a more 
perfect union." 

But if destruction of the Union, by one, or 
by a part only, of the States, be lawfully pos- 
sible, the Union is less perfect than before, the 
Constitution having lost the vital element of 
perpetuity. 

It follows, from these views, that no State, 
upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out 
of the Union ; that resolves and ordinances to 
that effect are legally void ; and that acts of 
violence within any State or States, against the 
authority of the United States, are insurrec- 
tionary or revolutionary, according to circum- 
stances. 

I therefore consider that, in view of the Con- 
stitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken, 
and to the extent of my ability I shall take 
care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins 
upon me, that the laws of the Union be faith- 



148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

fully executed in all the States. Doing this I 
deem to be only a simple duty on my part ; 
and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, un- 
less my rightful masters, the American people, 
shall withhold the requisite means, or, in some 
authoritative manner, direct the contrary. I 
trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but 
only as the declared purpose of the Union that 
it will constitutionally defend and maintain 
itself. In doing this there need be no blood- 
shed or violence ; and there shall be none, un- 
less it be forced upon the National authority. 
The power confided to me will be used to hold, 
occupy, and possess the property and places 
belonging to the government, and to collect 
the duties and imposts ; but beyond what may 
be necessary for these objects, there will be no 
invasion, no using of force against or among 
the people anywhere. Where hostility to the 
United States, in any interior locality, shall be 
so great and universal as to prevent competent 
resident citizens from holding the Federal 
ofifices, there will be no attempt to force ob- 
noxious strangers among the people for that 
object. While the strict legal right may exist 
in the government to enforce the exercise 
of these offices, the attempt to do so would be 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 149 

SO irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, 
that I deem it better to forego, for the time, 
the uses of such offices. 

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be 
furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as 
possible, the people everywhere shall have that 
sense of perfect security which is most favor- 
able to calm thought and reflection. The 
course here indicated will be followed, unless 
current events and experience shall show a 
modification or change to be proper, and in 
every case and exigency my best discretion 
will be exercised, according to circumstances 
actually existing, and with a view and a hope 
of a peaceful solution of the National troubles, 
and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and 
affections. 

That there are persons in one section or an- 
other who seek to destroy the Union at all 
events, and are glad of any pretext to do it, I 
will neither affirm nor deny ; but if there be 
such, I need address no word to them. To 
those, however, who really love the Union, may 
I not speak? 

Before entering upon so grave a matter as 
the destruction of our National fabric, with all 
its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would 



150 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

it not be wise to ascertain why we do it ? Will 
you hazard so desperate a step while there is 
any possibility that any portion of the certain 
ills you fly from have no real existence ? Will 
you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater 
than all the real ones you fly from, — will you 
risk the omission of so fearful a mistake ? 

All profess to be content in the Union, if all 
constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it 
true, then, that any right, plainly written in the 
Constitution, has been denied ? I think not. 
Happily the human mind is so constituted that 
no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. 
Think, if you can, of a single instance in which 
a plainly written provision of the Constitution 
has ever been denied. If, by the mere force of 
numbers, a majority should deprive a minority 
of any clearly written constitutional right, it 
might, in a moral point of view, justify revolu- 
tion — certainly would if such right were a vital 
one. But such is not our case. All the vital 
rights of minorities and of individuals are so 
plainly assured to them by affirmations and ne- 
gations, guaranties and prohibitions in the Con- 
stitution, that controversies never arise con- 
cerning them. But no organic law can ever be 
framed with a provision specifically applicable 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 151 

to every question which may occur in practical 
administration. No foresight can anticipate, 
nor any document of reasonable length contain, 
express provisions for all possible questions. 
Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by 
National or State authority? The Constitution 
does not expressly say. May Congress pro- 
hibit slavery in the Territories ? The Constitu- 
tion does not expressly say. Must Congress 
protect slavery in the Territories ? The Con- 
stitution does not expressly say. 

From questions of this class spring all our 
constitutional controversies, and we divide 
upon them into majorities and minorities. If 
the minority will not acquiesce, the majority 
must, or the government must cease. There 
is no other alternative ; for continuing the 
government is acquiescence on one side or the 
other. If a minority in such case will secede 
rather fhan acquiesce, they make a precedent 
which, in turn, will divide and ruin them ; for 
a minority of their own will secede from them 
whenever a majority refuses to be controlled 
by such a minority. For instance, why may 
not any portion of a new confederacy, a year 
or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely 
as portions of the present Union now claim to 



152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

secede from it ? All who cherish disunion sen- 
timents are now being educated to the exact 
temper of doing this. 

Is there such perfect identity of interests 
among the States to compose a new Union, as 
to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed 
secession ? 

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the 
essence of anarchy. A majority held in re- 
straint by constitutional checks and limitations, 
and always changing easily with deliberate 
changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is 
the only true sovereign of a free people. Who- 
ever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy 
or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible ; the 
rule of a minority, as a permanent arrange- 
ment, is wholy inadmissible ; so that, rejecting 
the majority principle, anarchy or despotism, 
in some form, is all that is left. * * * 

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. 
We cannot remove our respective sections from 
each other, nor build an impassable wall be- 
tween them. A husband and wife may be di- 
vorced, and go out of the presence and beyond 
the reach of each other ; but the different parts 
of our country cannot do this. They cannot 
but remain face to face, and intercourse, either 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 1 53 

amicable or hostile, must continue between 
them. It is impossible, then, to make that in- 
tercourse more advantageous or more satisfac- 
tory after separation than before. Can aliens 
make treaties easier than friends can make 
laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced 
between aliens than laws can among friends ? 
Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight al- 
ways, and when after much loss on both sides 
and no gain on either you cease fighting, the 
identical old questions as to terms of inter- 
course are again upon you. 

This country, with its institutions, belongs 
to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they 
shall grow weary of the existing government 
they can exercise their constitutional right of 
amending it, or their revolutionary right to dis- 
member or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant 
of the fact that many worthy and patriotic 
citizens are desirous of having the National 
Constitution amended. * * * I understand 
a proposed amendment to the Constitution — 
which amendment, however, I have not seen — 
has passed Congress, to the effect that the 
Federal Government shall never interfere with 
the domestic institutions of the States, includ- 
ing that of persons held to service. To avoid 



154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: 

misconstruction of what I have said, I depart 
from my purpose not to speak of particular 
amendments, so far as to say that, holding such 
a provision now to be implied constitutional 
law, I have no objections to its being made ex- 
press and irrevocable. 

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority 
from the people, and they have conferred none 
upon him to fix terms for the separation of the 
States. The people themselves can do this 
also if they choose, but the Executive, as such, 
has nothing to do with it. His duty is to ad- 
minister the present government as it came to 
his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by 
him, to his successor. Why should there not 
be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice 
of the people ? Is there any better or equal 
hope in the world ? In our present differences 
is either party without faith of being in the 
right ? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with 
his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of 
the North, or yours of the South, that truth 
and that justice will surely prevail, by the judg- 
ment of this great tribunal of the American 
people. By the frame of the Government 
under which we live, the same people have 
wisely given their public servants but little 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. I 55 

power for mischief, and have with equaLwisdom 
provided for the return of that little to their 
own hands at very short intervals. While the 
people retain their virtue and vigilance, no ad- 
ministration, by any extreme of wickedness or 
folly, can very seriously injure the government 
in the short space of four years. 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly 
and well upon this whole subject. Nothing 
valuable can be lost by taking time. If there 
be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste 
to a step which you would never take deliber- 
ately, that object will be frustrated by taking 
time ; but no good object can be frustrated by 
it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still 
have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on 
the sensitive point, the laws of your own fram- 
ing under it; while the new Administration will 
have no immediate power, if it would, to 
change either. If it were admitted that you 
who are dissatisfied hold the right side in this 
dispute there is still no single good reason for 
precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, 
Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who 
has never yet forsaken this favored land are still 
competent to adjust in the best way all our 
present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatis- 



156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

fied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, are the 
momentous issues of civil war. The govern- 
ment will not assail you. You can have no 
conflict without being yourselves the ag- 
gressors. You have no oath registered ~ in 
Heaven to destroy the government, while I 
shall have the most solemn one to " preserve, 
protect, and defend " it. 

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but 
friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained, it must not break, 
our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of 
memory, stretching from every battle-field and 
patriot grave to every living heart and hearth- 
stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union when again touched, as 
surely they will be, by the better angels of our 
nature. 



JEFFERSON DAVIS, 

OF MISSISSIPPI. 
(born 1808.) 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MONTGOMERY, ALA., FEB- 
RUARY 18, 1861. 

Gentlemen of the Congress of the Con- 
federate States of America, Friends, 
AND Fellow-Citizens : 

Our present condition, achieved in a manner 
unprecedented in the history of nations, illus- 
trates the American idea that governments rest 
upon the consent of the governed, and that it 
is the right of the people to alter and abolish 
governments whenever they become destructive 
to the ends for which they were established. 
The declared compact of the Union from which 
we have withdrawn was to establish justice, 
ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 
common defence, promote the general welfare, 
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves 
and our posterity ; and when in the judgment 
157 



158 JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

of the sovereign States now composing this 
Confederacy it has been perverted from the 
purposes for which it was ordained, and ceased 
to answer the ends for which it was estabHshed, 
a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared 
that, so far as they were concerned, the govern- 
ment created by that compact should cease to 
exist. In this they merely asserted the right 
which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 
defined to be inalienable. Of the time and 
occasion of this exercise they as sovereigns 
were the final judges, each for himself. The 
impartial, enlightened verdict of mankind will 
vindicate the rectitude of our conduct ; and He 
who knows the hearts of men will judge of the 
sincerity with which we labored to preserve the 
government of our fathers in its spirit. 

The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth 
of the States, and which has been affirmed and 
reaffirmed in the bills of rights of the States 
subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, 
undeniably recognizes in the people the power 
to resume the authority delegated for the 
purposes of government. Thus the sovereign 
States here represented proceeded to form this 
Confederacy ; and it is by the abuse of lan- 
guage that their act has been denominated 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 159 

revolution. They formed a new alliance, but 
within each State its government has remained. 
The rights of person and property have not 
been disturbed. The agent through whom 
they communicated with foreign nations is 
changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt 
their international relations. Sustained by the 
consciousness that the transition from the 
former Union to the present Confederacy has 
not proceeded from a disregard on our part of 
our just obligations or any failure to perform 
every constitutional duty, moved by no interest 
or passion to invade the rights of others, 
anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with 
all nations, if we may not hope to avoid war, 
we may at least expect that posterity will 
acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it. 
Doubly justified by the absence of wrong on 
our part, and by wanton aggression on the part 
of others, there can be no use to doubt the 
courage and patriotism of the people of the 
Confederate States will be found equal to any 
measure of defence which soon their security 
may require. 

An agricultural people, whose chief interest 
is the export of a commodity required in every 
manufacturing country, our true policy is peace 



l6o JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

and the freest trade which our necessities will 
permit. It is alike our interest and that of all 
those to whom we would sell and from whom 
we would buy, that there should be the fewest 
practicable restrictions upon the interchange of 
commodities. There can be but little rivalry 
between ours and any manufacturing or navi- 
gating community, such as the northeastern 
States of the American Union. It must follow, 
therefore, that mutual interest would invite 
good-will and kind offices. If, however, passion 
or lust of dominion should cloud the judgment 
or inflame the ambition of those States, we 
must prepare to meet the emergency, and main- 
tain by the final arbitrament of the sword the 
position which we have assumed among the 
nations of the earth. 

We have entered upon a career of independ- 
ence, and it must be inflexibly pursued through 
many years of controversy with our late associ- 
ates of the Northern States. We have vainly 
endeavored to secure tranquillity and obtain re- 
spect for the rights to which we were entitled. 
As a necessity, not a choice, we have resorted 
to the remedy of separation, and henceforth 
our energies must be directed to the conduct of 
our own affairs, and the perpetuity of the Con- 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. l6l 

federacy which we have formed. If a just 
perception of mutual interest shall permit us 
peaceably to pursue our separate political ca- 
reer, my most earnest desire will have been 
fulfilled. But if this be denied us, and the in- 
tegrity of our territory and jurisdiction be as- 
sailed, it will but remain for us with firm resolve 
to appeal to arms and invoke the blessing of 
Providence on a just cause. * * * 

Actuated solely by a desire to preserve our 
own rights, and to promote our own welfare, the 
separation of the Confederate States has been 
marked by no aggression upon others, and fol- 
lowed by no domestic convulsion. Our indus- 
trial pursuits have received no check, the culti- 
vation of our fields progresses as heretofore, 
and even should we be involved in war, there 
would be no considerable diminution in the pro- 
duction of the staples which have constituted 
our exports, in which the commercial world has 
an interest scarcely less than our own. This 
common interest of producer and consumer can 
only be intercepted by an exterior force which 
should obstruct its transmission to foreign mar- 
kets, a course of conduct which would be detri- 
mental to manufacturing and commercial inter- 
ests abroad. 



1 62 JEFFERSON DAVIS. 

Should reason guide the action of the gov- 
ernment from which we have separated, a pohcy 
so detrimental to the civilized world, the North- 
ern States included, could not be dictated by 
even a stronger desire to inflict injury upon us ; 
but if it be otherwise, a terrible responsibility 
will rest upon it, and the suffering of millions 
will bear testimony to the folly and wickedness 
of our aggressors. In the meantime there will 
remain to us, besides the ordinary remedies 
before suggested, the well-known resources for 
retaliation upon the commerce of an enemy. 
* ■» * -^g have changed the constituent parts 
but not the system of our government. The 
Constitution formed by our fathers is that of 
these Confederate States. In their exposition 
of it, and in the judicial construction it has 
received, we have a light which reveals its true 
meaning. Thus instructed as to the just inter- 
pretation of that instrument, and ever remem- 
bering that all ofhces are but trusts held for 
the people, and that delegated powers are to be 
strictly construed, I will hope by due diligence 
in the performance of my duties, though I may 
disappoint your expectation, yet to retain, when 
retiring, something of the good-will and confi- 
dence which .will welcome my entrance into 
office. 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 163 

It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to 
look around upon a people united in heart, 
when one purpose of high resolve animates and 
actuates the whole, where the sacrifices to be 
made are not weighed in the balance, against 
honor, right, liberty, and equality. Obstacles 
may retard, but they cannot long prevent, the 
progress of a movement sanctioned by its jus- 
tice and sustained by a virtuous people. Rev- 
erently let us invoke the God of our fathers to 
guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetu- 
ate the principles which by His blessing they 
were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit 
to their posterity ; and with a continuance of 
His favor, ever gratefully acknowledged, we 
may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, 
to prosperity. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS, 

OF GEORGIA. 
(born i8i2, died 1884.) 



THE " CORNER-STONE " ADDRESS ; ATHEN^UM, 
SAVANNAH, GA., MARCH 21, 1861. 

Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen : 

We are in the midst of one of the greatest 
epochs in our history. The last ninety days 
will mark one of the most interesting eras in 
the history of modern civilization. Seven 
States have in the last three months thrown 
ofT an old government and formed a new. This 
revolution has been signally marked, up to this 
time, by the fact of its having been accom- 
plished without the loss of a single drop of 
blood. This new constitution, or form of gov- 
ernment, constitutes the subject to which your 
attention will be partly invited. 

In reference to it, I make this first general 
remark : it amply secures all our ancient rights, 
franchises, and liberties. All the great princi- 
164 



1 



CORNER-STONE ADDRESS. 1 65 

pies of Magna Charta are retained in it. No 
citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, 
but by the judgment of his peers under the 
laws of the land. The great principle of re- 
ligious liberty, which was the honor and pride 
of the old Constitution, is still maintained and 
secured. All the essentials of the old Consti- 
tution, which have endeared it to the hearts of 
the American people, have been preserved and 
perpetuated. Some changes have been made. 
Some of these I should prefer not to have seen 
made ; but other important changes do meet 
my cordial approbation. They form great im- 
provements upon the old Constitution. So, 
taking the whole new constitution, I have no 
hesitancy in giving it as my judgment that it is 
decidedly better than the old. 

Allow me briefly to allude to some of these 
improvements. The question of building up 
class interests, or fostering one branch of in- 
dustry to the prejudice of another under the 
exercise of the revenue power, which gave us 
so much trouble under the old Constitution, is 
put at rest forever under the new. We allow 
the imposition of no duty with a view of giving 
advantage to one class of persons, in any trade 
or business, over those of another. All, under 



1 66 ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

our system, stand upon the same broad princi- 
ples of perfect equality. Honest labor and 
enterprise are left free and unrestricted in what- 
ever pursuit they may be engaged. This old 
thorn of ^the tariff, which was the cause of so 
much irritation in the old body politic, is re- 
moved forever from the new. 

Again, the subject of internal improvements, 
under the power of Congress to regulate com- 
merce, is put at rest under our system. The 
power, claimed by construction under the old 
Constitution, was at least a doubtful one ; it rest- 
ed solely upon construction. We of the South, 
generally apart from considerations of consti- 
tutional principles, opposed its exercise upon 
grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. * * * 
Our opposition sprang from no hostility to 
commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitat- 
ing it. With us it was simply a question upon 
whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for 
instance, we have done as much for the cause of 
internal improvements as any other portion of 
the country, according to population and means. 
We have stretched out lines of railroad from 
the seaboard to the mountains ; dug down the 
hills, and filled up the valleys, at a cost of $25,- 
000,000. * * * No State was in greater need 



CORNER-STONE ADDRESS. iGj 

of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not 
ask that these works should be made by appro- 
priations out of the common treasury. The 
cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the 
equipment of our roads was borne by those 
who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, 
more, not only the cost of the iron — no small 
item in the general cost^was borne in the same 
way, but we were compelled to pay into the 
common treasury several millions of dollars for 
the privilege of importing the iron, after the 
price was paid for it abroad. What justice was 
there in taking this money, which our people 
paid into the common treasury on the importa- 
tion of our iron, and applying it to the improve- 
ment of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The 
true principle is to subject the commerce of 
every locality to whatever burdens may be 
necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor 
needs improvement, let the commerce of 
Charleston bear the burden. * * * This, again, 
is the broad principle of perfect equality and 
justice ; and it is especially set forth and estab- 
lished in our new constitution. 

Another feature to which I will allude is that 
the new constitution provides that cabinet 
ministers and heads of departments may have 



1 68 ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

the privilege of seats upon the floor of the 
Senate and House of Representatives, may 
have the right to participate in the debates and 
discussions upon the various subjects of admin- 
istration. I should have preferred that this 
provision should have gone further, and re- 
quired the President to select his constitutional 
advisers from the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives. That would have conformed entirely 
to the practice in the British Parliament, which, 
in my judgment, is one of the wisest provisions 
in the British constitution. It is the only 
feature that saves that government. It is that 
which gives it stability in its facility to change 
its administration. Ours, as it is, is a great 
approximation to the right principle. 

Another change in the Constitution relates to 
the length of the tenure of the Presidential of- 
fice. In the new constitution it is six years in- 
stead of four, and the President is rendered 
ineligible for a re-election. This is certainly a 
decidedly conservative change. It will remove 
from the incumbent all temptation to use his 
ofifice or exert the powers confided to him for 
any objects of personal ambition. The only in- 
centive to that higher ambition which should 
move and actuate one holding such high trusts 



CORNER-STONE ADDRESS. 1 69 

in his hands will be the good of the people, the 
advancement, happiness, safety, honor, and true 
glory of the Confederacy. 

But, not to be tedious in enumerating the 
numerous changes for the better, allow me to 
allude to one other — though last, not least. 
The new constitution has put at rest forever all 
the agitating questions relating to our peculiar 
institution, African slavery as it exists amongst 
us, the proper status of the negro in our form 
of civilization. This was the immediate cause 
of the late rupture and present revolution. Jef- 
ferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this as 
the " rock upon which the old Union would 
split." He was right. What was conjecture 
with him is now a realized fact. But whether 
he fully comprehended the great truth upon 
which that rock stood and stands may be 
doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by 
him and most of the leading statesmen at the 
time of the formation of the old Constitution 
were that the enslavement of the African was 
in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was 
wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politi- 
cally. It was an evil they knew not well how 
to deal with ; but the general opinion of the 
men of that day was that, somehow or other, in 



I/O ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

the order of Providence, the institution would 
be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though 
not incorporated in the Constitution, was the 
prevailing idea at that time. The Constitution, 
it is true, secured every essential guarantee to 
the institution while it should last, and hence 
no argument can be justly urged against the 
constitutional guaranties thus secured, because 
of the common sentiment of the day. Those 
ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. 
They rested upon the assumption of the equal- 
ity of races. This was an error. It was a sandy 
foundation, and the government built upon it 
fell when "the storm came and the wind blew." 

Our new government is founded upon ex- 
actly the opposite idea ; its foundations are laid, 
its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that 
the negro is not equal to the white man, that 
slavery — subordination to the superior race — is 
his natural and normal condition. 

This, our new government, is the first in the 
history of the world based upon this great physi- 
cal, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth 
has been slow in the process of its development, 
like all other truths in the various departments 
of science. It has been so even amongst us. 
Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well 



CORNER-STONE ADDRESS. 17I 

that this truth was not generally admitted, even 
within their day. The errors of the past gener- 
ation still clung to many as late as twenty years 
ago. Those at the North who still cling to 
these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, 
we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism 
springs from an aberration of the mind, from a 
defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. 
One of the most striking characteristics of in- 
sanity, in many instances, is forming correct 
conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises. 
So with the antislavery fanatics ; their conclu- 
sions are right, if their premises were. They 
assume that the negro is equal, and hence con- 
clude that he is entitled to equal rights and 
privileges with the white man. If their prem- 
ises were correct, their conclusions would be 
logical and just ; but, their premise being wrong, 
their whole argument fails. I recollect once 
hearing a gentleman from one of the Northern 
States, of great power and ability, announce in 
the House of Representatives, with imposing 
effect, that we of the South would be compelled 
ultimately to yield upon this subject of slavery, 
that it was as impossible to war successfully 
against a principle in politics as it was in phys- 
ics or mechanics ; that the principle would ulti- 



172 ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

mately prevail ; that we, in maintaining slavery 
as it exists with us, were warring against a prin- 
ciple, founded in nature, the principle of the 
equality of men. The reply I made to him was 
that upon his own grounds we should ultimately 
succeed, and that he and his associates in this 
crusade against our institutions would ulti- 
mately fail. The truth announced, that it was 
as impossible to war successfully against a prin- 
ciple in politics as it was in physics and me- 
chanics, I admitted ; but told him that it was 
he, and those acting with him, who were warring 
against a principle. They were attempting to 
make things equal which the Creator had made 
unequal. 

In the conflict, thus far, success has been on 
our side, complete throughout the length and 
breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon 
this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly 
planted ; and I cannot permit myself to doubt 
the ultimate success of a full recognition of 
this principle throughout the civilized and en- 
lightened world. 

As I have stated, the truth of this principle 
may be slow in development, as all truths are 
and ever have been, in the various branches of 
science. It was so with the principles an- 



CORNER-STONE ADDRESS. 1 73 

nounced by Galileo. It was so with Adam 
Smith and his principles of political economy. 
It was so with Harvey and his theory of the 
circulation of the blood ; it is stated that not a 
single one of the medical profession, living at 
the time of the announcement of the truths 
made by him, admitted them. Now they are 
universally acknowledged. May we not, there- 
fore, look with confidence to the ultimate uni- 
versal acknowledgement of the truths upon 
which our system rests ? It is the first govern- 
ment ever instituted upon the principles in 
strict conformity to nature and the ordination 
of Providence in furnishing the materials of 
human society. Many governments have been 
founded upon the principle of the subordina- 
tion and serfdom of certain classes of the same 
race ; such were and are in violation of the laws 
of nature. Our system commits no such viola- 
tion of nature's laws. With us, all the white 
race, however high or low, rich or poor, are 
equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the 
negro ; subordination is his place. He, by na- 
ture or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted 
for that condition which he occupies in our sys- 
tem. The architect, in the construction of 
buildings, lays the foundation with the proper 



174 ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. 

material — the granite ; then comes the brick or 
the marble. The substratum of our society is 
made of the material fitted by nature for it ; 
and by experience we know that it is best not 
only for the superior race, but for the inferior 
race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in con- 
formity with the ordinance of the Creator. It 
is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His 
ordinances, or to question them. For His own 
purposes He has made one race to differ from 
another, as He has made " one star to differ 
from another star in glory." The great objects 
of humanity are best attained when there is 
conformity to His laws and decrees, in the for- 
mation of governments as well as in all things 
else. Our Confederacy is founded upon princi- 
ples in strict conformity with these views. This 
stone, which was rejected by the first builders, 
" is become the chief of the corner," the real 
" corner-stone " in our new edifice. * * * 

Mr. Jefferson said in his inaugural, in 1801, 
after the heated contest preceding his election, 
that there might be differences of opinion with- 
out differences of principle, and that all, to 
some extent, had been Federalists, and all Re- 
publicans. So it may now be said of us that, 
whatever differences of opinion as to the best 



CORNER-STONE ADDRESS. 1 75 

policy in having a co-operation with our border 
sister slave States, if the worst came to the 
worst, as we were all co-operationists, we are all 
now for independence, whether they come or 
not. * * * 

We are a young republic, just entering upon 
the arena of nations ; we will be the architects 
of our own fortunes. Our destiny, under Provi- 
dence, is in our own hands. With wisdom, pru- 
dence, and statesmanship on the part of our 
public men, and intelligence, virtue, and patriot- 
ism on the part of the people, success to the 
full measure of our most sanguine hopes may 
be looked for. But, if unwise counsels prevail, 
if we become divided, if schisms arise, if dis- 
sensions spring up, if factions are engendered, if 
party spirit, nourished by unholy personal am- 
bition, shall rear its hydra head, I have no good 
to prophesy for you. Without intelligence, vir- 
tue, integrity, and patriotism on the part of the 
people, no republic or representative govern- 
ment can be durable or stable. 



STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS, 

OF ILLINOIS. 

(born 1813, DIED 1861.) 



ON THE WAR ; ADDRESS TO THE ILLINOIS LEGISLA« 
TURE, SPRINGFIELD, ILLS., APRIL 25, 1861. 

Gentlemen : 

I am not insensible to the patriotic motives 
which prompted you to do me the honor to in- 
vite me to address you, on this occasion, upon 
the momentous issues now presented in the con- 
dition of the country. With a heart filled with 
sadness and grief I comply with your request. 

For the first time since the adoption of this 
Federal Constitution, a widespread conspiracy 
exists to destroy the best government the sun 
of heaven ever shed its rays upon. Hostile 
armies are now marching upon the Federal 
capital, with a view of planting a revolutionary 
flag upon its dome. * * * The boast has gone 
forth by the secretary of war of this revolutionary 
government that on the first day of May the revo- 
175 



ON THE WAR. lyj 

lutionary flag shall float from the walls of the 
Capitol at Washington, and that on the fourth 
day of July the revolutionary army shall hold 
possession of the Hall of Independence. The 
simple question presented to us is whether we 
will wait for the enemy to carry out this boast 
of making war on our soil, or whether we will 
rush as one man to the defence of this govern- 
ment, and its capital, to defend it from the 
hands of all assailants who have threatened it. 
Already the piratical flag has been unfurled 
against the commerce of the United States. 
Letters of marque have been issued, appealing 
to the pirates of the world to assemble under 
that revolutionary flag, and commit depreda- 
tions on the commerce carried on under the 
stars and stripes. Hostile batteries have been 
planted upon its fortresses ; custom-houses 
have been established ; and we are required 
now to pay tribute and taxes without having a 
voice in making the laws imposing them, or hav- 
ing a share in the distribution of them after they 
have been collected. The question is whether 
this war of aggression shall proceed, and we re- 
main with folded arms inactive spectators, or 
whether we shall meet the aggressors at the 
threshold and turn back the tide. * * * 



178 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

I ask you to reflect and then point out any 
one act that has been done, any one duty that 
has been omitted to be done, of which these 
disunionists can justly complain. Yet we are 
told, simply because one party has succeeded in 
a Presidential election, therefore they choose to 
consider that their liberties are not safe and there- 
fore they will break up the government. I had 
supposed that it was a cardinal and fundamental 
principle of our system of government that the 
decision of the people at the ballot-box, without 
a fraud, according to the forms of the Constitu- 
tion, was to command the explicit obedience of 
every good citizen. If their defeat at a Presi- 
dential election is to justify the minority, or any 
portion of the minority, in raising the traitorous 
hand of rebellion against the constituted au- 
thorities, you will find the future history of the 
United States written in the history of Mexico. 
According to my reading of Mexican history, 
there never has been one Presidential term, 
from the time of the revolution of 1820 down 
to this day, when the candidate elected by the 
people ever served his four years. In every in- 
stance, either the defeated candidate has seized 
upon the Presidential chair by the use of the bay- 
onet, or he has turned out the only duly elected 



ON THE WAR. 1 79 

candidate before his term expired. Are we to in- 
augurate this Mexican system in the United 
States of America? * * * The first duty of 
an American citizen, or of a citizen of any con- 
stitutional government, is obedience to the con- 
stitution and laws of his country. I have no 
apprehension that any man in Illinois or be- 
yond the limits of our own beloved State will 
misconstrue or misunderstand my motive. So 
far as any of the partisan questions are concerned, 
I stand in equal, eternal, and undying opposition 
to the Republicans and the Secessionists. You 
all know that I am a good partisan fighter in 
partisan times. And you will find me equally 
as good a patriot when the country is in dan- 
ger. Permit me to say to the assembled Repre- 
sentatives and Senators of our good old State, 
composed of men of both political parties, that 
in my opinion it is your duty to lay aside your 
party creeds and party platforms, to lay aside 
your party organizations and partisan appeals, 
to forget that you were divided, until you have 
rescued the government and the country from 
their assailants. Then resume your partisan 
positions, according to your wishes. Give me 
a country first, that my children may live in 
peace ; then we will have a theatre for our 
party organizations to operate upon. 



l8o STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

I appeal to you, my countrymen, men of all 
parties, not to allow your passions to get the 
better of your judgments. Do not allow your 
vengeance upon the authors of this great in- 
iquity to lead you into rash and cruel and des- 
perate acts upon those who may differ from 
you in opinion. Let the spirit of moderation 
and of justice prevail. You cannot expect, 
within so few weeks after an excited political 
canvass, that every man can rise to the level of 
forgetting his partisan prejudices and sacrifice 
every thing upon the altar of his country ; but 
allow me to say to you, whom I have opposed 
and warred against with an energy you will 
respect, — allow me to say to you that you will 
not be true to your country if you ever attempt 
to manufacture partisan capital out of the mis- 
eries of your country. When calling upon 
Democrats to rally to the tented field, leaving 
wife, child, father, and mother behind them, to 
rush to the rescue of the President that you 
elected, do not make war upon them and try 
to manufacture partisan capital out of a struggle 
in which they are engaged from the holiest and 
purest of motives. Then I appeal to you, my 
Democratic friends * * * do not allow the 
mortification growing out of a defeat in a par- 



ON THE WAR. l8l 

tisan struggle, and the elevation to power of a 
party that we firmly believed to be dangerous 
to the country, — do not let that convert you 
from patriots to traitors to your native land. 
Whenever our government is assailed, when 
hostile armies are marching under rude and 
odious banners against the government of our 
country, the shortest way to peace is the most 
stupendous and unanimous preparation for war. 
The greater the unanimity the less blood will 
be shed. The more prompt and energetic is 
the movement, and the more important it is in 
numbers, the shorter will be the struggle. 

While all the States of this Union, and every 
citizens of every State, has a priceless legacy 
dependent upon the success of our efforts to 
maintain this government, we in the great valley 
of the Mississippi have peculiar interests and in- 
ducements to the struggle. What is the attempt 
now being made? Seven States of this Union 
choose to declare that they will no longer obey 
the behest of the United States, that they will 
withdraw from the government established by 
our fathers, that they will dissolve, without our 
consent, the bonds that have united us to- 
gether. But, not content with that, they pro- 
ceed to invade and obstruct our dearest and 



1 82 STEP HEX ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

most inalienable rights, secured to us by the 
Constitution. One of their first acts is to 
establish a battery of cannon upon the banks of 
the Mississippi, on the dividing line between 
the States of Mississippi and Tennessee, and 
require every steamer that passes down the 
river to come to under a gun, to receive a cus- 
tom-house ofificer on board to prescribe where 
the boat may land, and upon what terms it may 
put out a barrel of flour or a cask of bacon, to 
cut off our freedom of trade upon the river and 
on the borders of those States. 

We are called on to sanction this policy. 
Before consenting to their right to commit such 
acts, I implore you to consider that the same 
principle which will allow the cotton States to 
exclude us from the ports of the Gulf, would 
authorize the New England States and New 
York and Pennsylvania to exclude us from the 
Atlantic, and the Pacific States to exclude us 
from the ports of that ocean. Whenever you 
sanction this doctrine of secession, you author- 
ize the States bordering on the Atlantic and 
Pacific oceans to withdraw from us, form alli- 
ances among themselves, and exclude us from 
the markets of the world and from communica- 
tion with all the rest of Christendom. Not 



I 



ON THE WAR. 1 83 

only this, but there follows a tariff of duties on 
imports, the levying of taxes on every pound 
of tea and coffee and sugar and every yard of 
cloth that we may import for our consumption ; 
the levying, too, of an export duty upon every 
pound of meat and every bushel of corn that 
we may choose to send to the markets of the 
world to pay for our imports. Bear in mind 
that these very cotton States, who in former 
times have been so boisterous in their demands 
for free trade, have, among their first acts, es- 
tablished an export duty on cotton for the first 
time in American history. 

It is an historical fact, well known to every 
man who has read the debates of the conven- 
tion which framed the Constitution of the 
United States, that the Southern States refused 
to become parties to the Constitution unless 
there was an express provision in the Constitu- 
tion forbidding Congress to levy an export 
duty on any product of the earth. No sooner 
have these cotton States seceded than an export 
duty is levied ; and, if they will levy it on their 
cotton, do you not think that they will levy it 
on our pork, and our beef, and our corn, and 
our wheat, and our manufactured articles, and 
on all we have to sell ? Then what is the 



1 84 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

proposition ? It is to enable the tier of States 
bordering on the Atlantic and Pacific, and on 
the Gulf, surrounding us on all sides, to with- 
draw from our Union, form alliances among 
themselves, and then levy taxes on us 
without our consent, and collect revenue 
without giving us any just proportion of all the 
amount collected. Can we submit to taxation 
without representation ? Can we permit nations 
foreign to us to collect revenues out of our 
produce, out of the fruit of our industry? I 
ask the citizens of Illinois, I ask every citizen in 
the great basin between the Rocky Mountains 
and the Alleghanies, in the valleys of the Ohio, 
the Mississippi, and the Missouri, to tell me 
whether he is willing to sanction a line of 
policy that may isolate us from the markets of 
the world, and make us provinces dependent on 
the powers that thus choose to isolate us ? 

I warn you, my countrymen, that, whenever 
you permit this to be done in the Southern 
States, New York will very soon follow their 
example. New York, that great port, where 
two thirds of our revenue are collected, and 
whence two thirds of our goods are exported, 
will not long be able to resist the temptation 
of taxing fifteen millions of people in the great 



ON THE WAR. ' 1 85 

West, when she can thus monopolize their re- 
sources, and release her own people from any 
taxation whatever. * * * Come what may, 
war, if it must be, though I deplore it as a great 
calamity, yet, come what may, the people of the 
Mississippi valley can never consent to be ex- 
cluded from free access to the ports of the 
Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. I 
am not prepared to take up arms, or to sanction 
a policy of our government to take up arms, to 
make any war on the rights of the Southern 
States, on their institutions, on their rights 
of person or property, but, on the contrary, 
would rush to their defence and protect them 
from assault ; but, while that is the case, 
I will never cease to urge my countrymen to 
take arms to fight to the death in defence of 
our indefeasible rights. Hence, if a war does 
come, it is a war of self-defence on our part. It 
is a war in defence of our own just rights, in 
defence of the government which we have 
inherited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic 
fathers, in defence of our great rights of freedom 
of trade, commerce, transit, and intercourse 
from the centre to the circumference of this 
great continent. These are rights we must 
struggle for and never surrender, * * * 



1 86 STEPHEN ARNOLD DOUGLAS. 

I see no path of ambition open in a bloody 
struggle for triumphs over my countrymen. 
There is no path of ambition open to me in 
a divided country. Hence, whatever we do 
must be the result of duty, of conviction, of 
patriotic duty, the duty we owe to ourselves, to 
our posterity, and to the friends of constitu- 
tional liberty and self-government throughout 
the world. 

My friends, I can say no more. To discuss « 

these topics is the most painful duty of my life. fl 

It is with a sad heart, with a grief that I have 
never before experienced, that I have to con- 
template this fearful struggle ; but I believe in 
my conscience that it is a duty we owe to 
ourselves, our children, and our God, to protect 
this government and that flag from every assail- 
ant, be he who he may. 



CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM, 

OF OHIO. 

(BORN 1820, DIED 187I.) 



ON THE WAR AND ITS CONDUCT ; HOUSE OF REPRE- 
SENTATIVES, JANUARY 14, 1863. 

Sir, I am one of that number who have 
opposed abolitionism, or the political develop- 
ment of the antislavery sentiment of the North 
and West, from the beginning. In school, at 
college, at the bar, in public assemblies, in the 
Legislature, in Congress, boy and man, in time 
of peace and in time of war, at all times and at 
every sacrifice, I have fought against it. It 
cost me ten years' exclusion from office and 
honor at that period of life when honors are 
sweetest. No matter ; I learned early to do 
right and to wait. Sir, it is but the develop- 
ment of the spirit of intermeddling, whose 
children are strife and murder. Cain troubled 
himself about the sacrifices of Abel, and slew 
his brother. Most of the wars, contentions, 
187 



1 88 CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 

litigation, and bloodshed, from the beginning 
of time, have been its fruits. The spirit of 
non-intervention is the very spirit of peace and 
concord. * * * 

The spirit of intervention assumed the form 
of abolitionism because slavery was odious in 
name and by association to the Northern mind, 
and because it was that which most obviously 
marks the different civilizations of the two sec- 
tions. The South herself, in her early and 
later efforts to rid herself of it, had exposed 
the weak and offensive parts of slavery to the 
world. Abolition intermeddling taught her at 
last to search for and defend the assumed 
social, economic, and political merit and values 
of the institution. But there never was an 
hour from the beginning when it did not seem 
to me as clear as the sun at broad noon that 
the agitation in any form in the North and 
West of the slavery question must sooner or 
later end in disunion and civil war. This was 
the opinion and prediction for years of Whig 
and Democratic statesmen alike ; and, after the 
unfortunate dissolution of the Whig party in 
1854, and the organization of the present Re- 
publican party upon the exclusive antislavery 
and sectional basis, the event was inevitable. 



ON THE WAR. 1 89 

because, in the then existing temper of the 
pubHc mind, and after the education through 
the press and the pulpit, the lecture and the 
political canvass, for twenty years, of a genera- 
tion taught to hate slavery and the South, the 
success of that party, possessed as it was of 
every engine of political, business, social, and 
religious influence, was certain. It was only a 
question of time, and short time. Such was its 
strength, indeed, that I do not believe that the 
union of the Democratic party in i860 on any 
candidate, even though he had been supported 
also by the entire so-called conservative or anti- 
Lincoln vote of the country, would have availed 
to defeat it ; and, if it had, the success of the 
Abolition party would only have been post- 
poned four years longer. The disease had fast- 
ened too strongly upon the system to be healed 
until it had run its course. The doctrine of 
" the irrepressible conflict " had been taught 
too long, and accepted too widely and earnestly, 
to die out until it should culminate in secession 
and disunion, and, if coercion were resorted to, 
then in civil war. I believed from the first that 
it was the purpose of some of the apostles of 
that doctrine to force a collision between the 
North and the South, either to bring about a 



IQO CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 

separation or to find a vain but bloody pretext 
for abolishing slavery in the States. In any 
event, I knew, or thought I knew, that the end 
was certain collision and death to the Union. 

Believing thus, I have for years past de- 
nounced those who taught that doctrine, with 
all the vehemence, the bitterness, if you choose 
— I thought it a righteous, a patriotic bitterness 
— of an earnest and impassioned nature. * * * 
But the people did not believe me, nor those 
older and wiser and greater than I. They 
rejected the prophecy, and stoned the prophets. 
The candidate of the Republican party was 
chosen President. Secession began. Civil war 
was imminent. It was no petty insurrection, 
no temporary combination to obstruct the exe- 
cution of the laws in certain States, but a revo- 
lution, systematic, deliberate, determined, and 
with the consent of a majority of the people of 
each State which seceded. Causeless it may 
have been, wicked it may have been, but there 
it was — not to be railed at, still less to be 
laughed at, but to be dealt with by statesmen 
as a fact. No display of vigor or force alone, 
however sudden or great, could have arrested 
it even at the outset. It was disunion at last. 
The wolf had come, but civil war had not yet 



ON THE WAR. I9I 

followed. In my deliberate and solemn judg- 
ment there was but one wise and masterly- 
mode of dealing with it. Non-coercion would 
avert civil war, and compromise crush out both 
abolitionism and secession. The parent and 
the child would thus both perish. But a resort 
to force would at once precipitate war, hasten 
secession, extend disunion, and while it lasted 
utterly cut off all hope of compromise. I be- 
lieved that war, if long enough continued, 
would be final, eternal disunion. I said it ; I 
meant it; and accordingly, to the utmost of my 
ability and influence, I exerted myself in be- 
half of the policy of non-coercion. It was 
adopted by Mr. Buchanan's administration, 
with the almost unanimous consent of the Dem- 
ocratic and Constitutional Union parties in and 
out of Congress ; and in February, with the 
consent of a majority of the Republican party 
in the Senate and the House. But that party 
most disastrously for the country refused all 
compromise. How, indeed, could they accept 
any ? That which the South demanded, and 
the Democratic and Conservative parties of the 
North and West were willing to grant, and 
which alone could avail to keep the peace and 
save the Union, implied a surrender of the sole 



192 CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 

vital element of the party and its platform, of 
the very principle, in fact, upon which it had 
just won the contest for the Presidency, not, 
indeed, by a majority of the popular vote — the 
majority was nearly a million against it, — but 
under the forms of the Constitution. Sir, the 
crime, the " high crime," of the Republican 
party was not so much its refusal to compro- 
mise, as its original organization upon a basis 
and doctrine wholly inconsistent with the sta- 
bility of the Constitution and the peace of the 
Union. 

The President-elect was inaugurated ; and 
now, if only the policy of non-coercion could be 
maintained, and war thus averted, time would 
do its work in the North and the South, and 
final peaceable adjustment and reunion be 
secured. Some time in March it was an- 
nounced that the President had resolved to 
continue the policy of his predecessor, and even 
go a step farther, and evacuate Sumter and the 
other Federal forts and arsenals in. the seceded 
States. His own party acquiesced ; the whole 
country rejoiced. The policy of non-coercion 
had triumphed, and for once, sir, in my life, I 
found myself in an immense majority. No 
man then pretended that a Union founded in 



ON THE WAR. 1 93 

consent could be cemented by force. Nay, 
more, the President and the Secretary of State 
went farther. Said Mr. Seward, in an ofificia- 
diplomatic letter to Mr. Adams: "For these 
reasons, he (the President) would not be dis- 
posed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs (the 
secessionists), namely, that the Federal Govern- 
ment could not reduce the seceding States to 
obedience by conquest, although he were dis- 
posed to question that proposition. But in 
fact the President willingly accepts it as true. 
Only an imperial or despotic government could 
subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrec- 
tionary members of the State. * * * This 
Federal republican system of ours is, of all 
forms of government, the very one which is 
most unfitted for such a labor." This, sir, was 
on the loth of April, and yet on that very day 
the fleet was under sail for Charleston. The 
policy of peace had been abandoned. Collision 
followed ; the militia were ordered out; civil 
war began. 

Now, sir, on the 14th of April, I believed 
that coercion would bring on war, and war dis- 
union. More than that, I believed what you 
all believe in your hearts to-day, that the South 
could never be conquered — never. And not 



194 CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 

that only, but I was satisfied — and you of the 
Abolition party have now proved it to the world 
— that the secret but real purpose of the war 
was to abolish slavery in the States. * * * 
These were my convictions on the 14th of 
April. Had I changed them on the 15th, when 
I read the President's proclamation, * * * 
I would have changed my public conduct also. 
But my convictions did not change. I thought 
that, if war was disunion on the 14th of April, 
it was equally disunion on the 15th, and at all 
times. Believing this, I could not, as an honest 
man, a Union man, and a patriot, lend an active 
support to the war ; and I did not. I had 
rather my right arm were plucked from its 
socket and cast into eternal burnings, than, 
with my convictions, to have thus defiled my 
soul with the guilt of moral perjury. Sir, I was 
not taught in that school which proclaims that 
" all is fair in politics." I loathe, abhoi", and 
detest the execrable maxim. * * * Perish 
office, perish honors, perish life itself ; but 
do the thing that is right, and do it like a 
man. * * * 

Certainly, sir ; I could not doubt what he 
must suffer who dare defy the opinions and the 
passions, not to say the madness, of twenty 



ON THE WAR. 1 95 

millions of people. * * * I did not support the 
war ; and to-day I bless God that not the smell 
of so much as one drop of its blood is upon my 
garments. Sir, I censure no brave man who 
rushed patriotically into this war ; neither will 
I quarrel with any one, here or elsewhere, who 
gave to it an honest support. Had their con- 
victions been mine, I, too, would doubtless 
have done as they did. With my convictions I 
could not. But I was a Representative. War 
existed — by whose act no matter — not by mine. 
The President, the Senate, the House, and the 
country all said that there should be war * * * 
and I belonged to that school of politics which 
teaches that, when we are at war, the govern- 
ment — I do not mean the Executive alone, but. 
the government — is entitled to demand and 
have, without resistance, such number of men, 
and such amount of money and supplies gener- 
ally, as may be necessary for the war, until an 
appeal can be had to the poople. Before that 
tribunal alone, in the first instance, must the 
question of the continuance of the war be tried. 
This was Mr. Calhoun's opinion * * * in the 
Mexican war. Speaking of that war in 1847, 
he said : " Every Senator knows that I was op- 
posed to the war ; but none but myself knows 



196 CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 

the depth of that opposition. With my con- 
ception of its character and consequences, it 
was impossible for me to vote for it. * * * 
But, after war was declared, by authority of the 
government, I acquiesced in what I could not 
prevent, and what it was impossible for me to 
arrest ; and I then felt it to be my duty to limit 
my efforts to give such direction to the war as 
would, as far as possible, prevent the evils and 
dangers with which it threatened the country 
and its institutions." 

Sir, I adopt all this as my position and my 
defence, though, perhaps, in a civil war, I might 
fairly go farther in opposition. I could not, 
with my convictions, vote men and money for 
this war, and I would not, as a Representative, 
vote against them. I meant that, without oppo- 
sition, the President might take all the men and 
all the money he should demand, and then to 
hold him to a strict responsibility before the 
people for the results. Not believing the soldiers 
responsible for the war or its purposes or its 
consequences, I have never withheld my vote 
where their separate interests were concerned. 
But I have denounced from the beginning the 
usurpations and the infractions, one and all, of 
law and constitution, by the President and 



ON THE WAR, I97 

those under him ; their repeated and persistent 
arbitrary arrests, the suspension of habeas cor- 
pus, the violation of freedom of the mails, of 
the private house, of the press, and of speech, 
and all the other multiplied wrongs and out- 
rages upon public liberty and private right, 
which have made this country one of the worst 
despotisms on earth for the past twenty months, 
and I will continue to rebuke and denounce 
them to the end ; and the people, thank God, 
have at last heard and heeded, and rebuked 
them too. To the record and to time I appeal 
again for my justification. 



CARL SCHURZ, 

OF WISCONSIN. 
(born 1829.) 



ON THE DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY ; ACADEMY OF 
MUSIC, MILWAUKEE, OCTOBER 28, 1 864. 

Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens : 

My experience leads me to believe that the 
party arrayed against the Government of the 
Republic in this crisis contains a large number 
of people who honestly mean to do right, but 
who by force of habit are following their accus- 
tomed leaders without questioning the consis- 
tency of their conduct and the candor and 
truthfulness of their representations. Their 
principal failing is that they are too careless to 
think for themselves, for a little independence 
of mind joined to their good intentions would 
certainly lead them to see what is right, and to 
act accordingly. It is to them that I will ad- 
dress myself. From the Democratic leaders I 
198 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 1 99 

will appeal to the Democratic masses. I shall 
abstain from all attempts to captivate their 
senses with oratorical display, and address my- 
self to their common-sense with the simplest 
language at my command. 

The object of our struggle with the rebellious 
people of the South is and ought to be to re- 
store the Union., and to Diake it a permanent in- 
stitution. * * * Our disagreement seems to 
be about the means and measures by which the 
common object is to be achieved. Let us re- 
view the points of difference. * * * 

Your leaders tell you that negro slaves are 
property just in the same measure and manner 
as horses and cattle and provisions are property. 
Granted for argument's sake. As our armies 
penetrated into the enemy's country, a large 
quantity of that negro property fell into their 
hands. What were we to do with the captured 
negroes? Send them back to their masters? 
or keep them, feed them, clothe them for the 
purpose of returning them at some future time ? 
We captured also cavalry horses and beeves. 
Who would have thought of sending them back 
to their owners, or of feeding and grooming 
them without using them ? The captured cat- 
tle property was butchered and distributed in 



200 CARL SCHURZ. 

the shape of rations ; upon the captured horse 
property we mount our cavahymen ; why, then, 
in the name of common-sense, should we not 
put the captured negro property to such use as 
it was capable of? Do you see how absurd it 
would be to object to this? And, mark you 
well, Democrats, this property theory is yours, 
and I have abstained from discussing the mat- 
ter from the standpoint of my own principles. 
But the principal thing against which your 
leaders protested was that the negroes were 
armed and employed as soldiers in the field. 
Keep in mind I am still for argument's sake 
speaking of the negro as a mere species of 
property. Why, then, should negro property 
not be used for fighting purposes ? It is reason- 
able, nay, it is necessary, that when engaged in 
war we should put all our means and instru- 
ments of warfare to the highest measure of use- 
fulness. We want our rifles and our artillery to 
have as much power of destruction as possible. 
If we could procure a cannon that would de- 
molish a whole regiment at one blow, would we 
not use it? If we could make our horses fight, 
instead of merely letting them carry our cav- 
alrymen, would we not do so? Why, then, not 
put the negro to the highest measure of his 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 20I 

usefulness? If he is able to fight, instead of 
merely driving teams or carrying bundles, why 
should we not make him fight ? Would it not 
be folly to abstain from doing so ? Do not the 
rebels make the savage Indian fight against civil- 
ized Union soldiers ? Would they not make 
alligators fight in their ranks if alligators were 
capable of discipline ? Why, then, in the name 
of common-sense, was it not better to make the 
negro fight for the Union, instead of obliging 
him to work for the rebellion ? I repeat it, 
Democrats, and I do not want you to forget it: 
in reasoning thus I have placed myself upon 
your own ground, and I mean to hold you to 
the logical consequences of your own position; 
if the negro is the property of our enemies, 
what reason is there that we should not use him 
as the enemy's property captured in war? 

But your leaders tell you that this measure 
has so irritated our Southern brethren, that 
reconciliation has become impossible unless we 
abandon it. Emancipation and the arming of 
negroes irritated the rebels. I doubt it not. 
You will find generally that that irritates them 
most which hurts them most. Look at our 
military and naval leaders. Grant, Sherman, 
Sheridan, and Farragut have irritated the reb- 



202 CARL SCHURZ. 

els very severely. You have chosen as your 
candidate for the Presidency a General whose 
nomination does not irritate the rebels at all, 
for the reason that the General never hurt 
them at all. Would it not be wise to go on 
irritating the rebellion by hurting it ? Who 
knows? We may succeed in bringing about 
its death by excessive irritation. * * * 

I might now close this review of the argu- 
ments by which your leaders try to convince 
you that a change of administration and of 
policy is necessary, were it not for one charge 
they bring against the government, and upon 
which they harp with the most vociferous per- 
sistency. It is that the government has during 
this war disregarded and violated the rights and 
liberties of the citizen. I am not the man to 
equivocate about such matters; I never shrink 
from discussing the merits or demerits of my 
own party, and I never deny what I believe to 
be a fact. Yes, the government has, in some 
cases, arrested and punished individuals for 
treasonable talk, and suspended newspapers for 
treasonable publications, especially when such 
talk or publications tended to impede recruit- 
ing or to induce soldiers to desert their colors. 
If I stood here as a mere advocate of the gov- 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 203 

ernment, I might examine case after case, and 
say this or that in justification of those in 
authority. But I will abstain. I will even go 
so far as to admit that, in some instances, the 
government would have acted with more wis- 
dom and justice if it had abstained from such 
interference. I will go still further, and say 
that I am, on principle, opposed to such acts, 
and that, in most cases, the evil done is greater 
than the evil redressed. I have a right to 
speak so, for I have always spoken so ; at an 
early period of this war I warned the people of 
the dangers arising from such encroachments, 
and from the condition of things that produces 
them. 

But where are the facts that would justify 
the wild denunciations hurled against the gov- 
erment by your Democratic leaders? Where 
are the "atrocities " which bear out the asser- 
tion " that in this country free speech and free 
press have ceased to exist? that this govern- 
ment is the worst despotism the world ever 
saw?" I ask you in all candor, did you ever 
attend a Democratic meeting during this elec- 
tion campaign ? If you have, then I defy you 
to show me in the English dictionary a term of 
opprobrium that has not, by your Democratic 



204 CARL SCHURZ. 

speakers, been most lavishly applied to the 
Government of this Republic. Let your im- 
agination invent a calumny, or an insult, that 
has not been thrown in the face of the Presi- 
dent of the United States. And now, while 
saying with impunity all they do say, they 
complain that they cannot say what they 
please ? Again, do you read Democratic news- 
papers? Tell me, are not, day after day, the 
President and all the members of the govern- 
ment denounced and vilified as the meanest 
and most execrable villains in all Christendom? 
And now, while writing what they do write 
every day with impunity, they insist upon 
complaining that they cannot write what they 
please. * * * 

But, you say, the restoration of the Union is 
not our only object ; we want to make the 
Union a permanent institution. Well, then, 
how is this to be done ? I appeal again to your 
common-sense. 

If you want to give permanency to the re- 
stored Union, the iirst thing necessary is that 
you put to rest the great element of discord, 
which has continually disturbed the repose and 
threatened the unity of the republic. And 
what is that element ? It is the omnipresent, 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 205 

eternal slavery question. Are you not heartily 
tired of it ? You always assured us that you 
were, and I respond by assuring you that I am. 
I wish I had never heard of it before, and I wish 
I might never again hear of it hereafter. In- 
deed, we have a right to be tired of it. For 
forty years it has agitated the public mind with 
continually increasing fury. No compromise 
could quiet it, no apparent settlement could ap- 
pease it. Is it necessary that I should show 
you why it sprang up again and again in spite 
of the efforts made to keep it down ? I have 
discussed the point a hundred times ; I will not 
repeat what has been said so often. Enough, 
it did keep the body politic in ceaseless agita- 
tion ; it did at last lead to an attempt to break 
up the republic. Every thing else could be 
settled by compromises, or by other means of 
mutual understanding, but the slavery question 
could not. This is the fact, and with the fact 
we have to deal. Is it not indeed time that, at 
last, it should be disposed of and put to rest, 
so that it may not trouble us again ? Is it not 
a duty we owe to the Union, the restoration of 
which is bought at so heavy a price that this 
great stumbling-block should be taken out of 
its way? But how dispose of it — how put it 



2o6 CARL SCHURZ. 

to rest forever ? There is but one way, and 
that is simple, straightforward, and sure. Let 
slavery itself disappear from the scene. Let it 
die, and it will not trouble us again. Slavery 
dead, there will be an end of the slavery ques- 
tion. 

You shrink back. Democrats, from the idea 
of giving the negro his freedom ? Why ? Have 
)'ou not told us again and again, that, while 
we were troubling ourselves so much about the 
negro question, the negro himself had every 
reason to feel happy and contented in the con- 
dition of slavery ? that he was well fed, well 
clothed, had but a moderate share of labor to 
perform, and no earthly cares upon him ? Did 
you not always tell us so ? And now mark 
well, I am reasoning on the ground of your own 
proposition. If the picture you draw of the 
pleasant life of the negro slave is true, well 
then, in the name of justice and common-sense, 
let the negro, after having so long enjoyed the 
comforts of slavery, at last learn to submit to 
the troubles and hardships of freedom ! Is a 
negro better than a white man ? Why should 
we expose ourselves to the perplexities of end- 
less controversies on his account ? Why should 
we expose the republic to the dangers of a 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 20/ 

ceaseless and furious agitation, merely to secure 
to the negro the careless ease and the sunny- 
happiness of his patriarchal condition ? Let 
him come forth ; let him work for his daily 
bread on his own responsibility ; let him, if 
need be, shoulder his musket for the defence of 
the republic, like the rest of us ; let him as- 
sume his share of trouble and danger; let him 
take care of himself — but, for the sake of all 
that is good and great, let the body politic have 
rest ! Is not this just and reasonable ? 

Still, after having argued thus upon premises 
advanced by yourselves, I do not ask you, 
Democrats, to sit down at the feet of William 
Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Philips, to be in- 
itiated in all the doctrines of abolitionism, nor 
dp I expect you to go to the South, gun in 
hand, for the purpose of freeing every man his 
negro. Your services are, by no means, indis- 
pensable in that line. Slavery is, at this mo- 
ment, abolishing itself. It is dying of its own 
poison. All I ask you to do, is not to go to 
the trouble of disturbing the process of nature, 
but to let it die. 

The ball of emancipation is rolling on in 
obedience to the laws of gravitation. Do not 
stand in the way. I do not expect you, Demo- 



208 CARL SCHURZ. 

crats, to push ; but all I ask you to do, is not to 
put on the brakes. You have always been 
telling us, that you, individually, did not love 
slavery ; I will go so far as to excuse you even 
from hating it ; only treat it with becoming dis- 
dain and indifference, and the rest will easily be 
attended to. Yes, slavery is abolishing itself ; 
you have only to acknowledge the fact, and let 
it be duly and legally recorded. Then you will 
be relieved of the controversy, which, as you 
told us, was always so distasteful to you ; with 
slavery the element of strife and discord will 
disappear, which alone has imperilled the per- 
manency of the Union. 

The best of your old standard-bearers have 
left you in disgust, and are now working with 
heart and hand on our side. And not only 
they. The best of your rank and file are now 
fighting under the banner of the Union, not 
only with their muskets, but also with their 
votes. Do you not know it ? You have heard 
the voices of the soldiers, not only as they speak 
in triple tones of thunder to the armed rebels 
of the South, but as they speak in triple tones 
of thunder to the disguised traitors of the 
North. You boasted once that a large ma- 
jority of the soldiers in the field came from the 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 209 

ranks of the Democratic party. Where are 
they now ? The army vote, whenever it was 
cast, stood nine for the Union candidate to one 
for the opposition. Did the Democratic party, 
indeed, send only one in ten ? I have heard it 
said that the soldier's vote is no reliable indica- 
tion of the soldier's political sentiments ; that 
the soldier votes as his officer directs him. He 
who says so, little knows the independent spirit 
of the American volunteer. But, if it were so, 
what then, pray, has become of your Demo- 
cratic officers ? No, I will not be unjust to 
you. You have, indeed, sent a very large num- 
ber of men from the ranks of your party into 
the array ; and there they are, flesh of your 
flesh, and blood of your blood. Why, then, do 
those Democratic soldiers no longer vote with 
you ? Let me say to you, that every man, to 
whatever party he may belong, as soon as he 
becomes a good Union soldier, becomes at the 
same time a good Union man. 

The soldier has gone through a school which 
would do a world of good to most of your lead- 
ing politicians. His political principles have 
been burned clean in the red-hot crucible of 
battle. In the awful solemnity of those mo- 
ments when death stared him in the face, and 



2IO CARL SCHURZ. 

when he squared his accounts with heaven and 
earth, he rose to a full appreciation of the tre- 
mendous responsibility, not only of the fighting, 
but also of the voting citizen ; then he felt 
clearly that his allegiance to party was nothing 
when in conflict with his allegiance to the great 
cause of his country ; then, rising above all his 
former prejudices, he became ready to acknowl- 
edge that this Union can be restored only upon 
the basis of universal liberty, and that liberty 
does not consist in the right of one man to hold 
another man as property. 

I entreat you to think for yourselves! As 
men of prudence, think of your true interests, 
and those of your children; they alone can be 
secured by a solid and lasting peace, such as 
will be the fruit only of an energetic and deci- 
sive war. As patriots and men of honor, think 
of the future of your country; it can be peace- 
ful and prosperous only when founded upon a 
Union in which the spirit of justice and liberty 
reigns supreme, and the rights of man are held 
sacred. As citizens of the great republic, 
think of the duty we owe to mankind ; it rests 
with us to furnish to the world the conclusive 
proof, a proof as incontestible as fact can make 
it, that a republic, organized on the largest 



DEMOCRATIC WAR POLICY. 211 

scale, may have in itself elements of order and 
strength enough to brave the storm of rebellion 
and war, and to carry the liberties of the people 
and the security of society safe through the 
turmoils of internal dissension ; nay, that from 
the terrible ordeal it may issue purified of the 
stains that disfigured it, relieved of the wrongs 
that burdened it, stronger in the affections of 
the people, and more formidable by the devel- 
opment and exercise of its power. 

I repeat it, think for yourselves, and then 
join us in giving the nations of the earth this 
noble example. Let the people of the United 
States, on the day of the national election, 
declare that, if the cause of Union and Liberty 
requires they should continue to fight, it is 
their own free will to give up their sons to the 
country, and fight ; if it requires they should 
continue to pay, it is their own free will to bear 
whatever burdens the struggle may bring with 
it, and pay ; if it requires they should continue 
to suffer, it is their own free will to submit to 
whatever sacrifices, trials, and hardships the 
cause may impose, and suffer. It is thus that 
the sovereignty of the people will be vindicated 
by the moral heroism of the people ; thus this 
republic, out of her greatest trial evolving her 



212 CARL SCHURZ. 

greatest triumph, will become worthy of her 
proud stand at the head of the century, and the 
flag of this country, in whatever quarter of the 
globe it may appear, will be hailed as a living 
proof of the faculty of man to govern himself. 



\ 



HENRY WARD BEECHER, 

OF NEW YORK. 
(born 1813.) 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL, OCTOBER 1 6, 1 863. 

For more than twenty-five years I have been 
made perfectly famiharwith popular assemblies 
in all parts of my country except the extreme 
South. There has not for the whole of that 
time been a single day of my life when it would 
have been safe for me to go South of Mason's 
and Dixon's line in my own country, and 
all for one reason : my solemn, earnest, persist- 
ent testimony against that which I consider 
to be the most atrocious thing under the sun — 
the system of American slavery in a great free 
republic. [Cheers.] I have passed through that 
early period when right of free speech w'as denied 
to me. Again and again I have attempted to 
address audiences that, for no other crime than 
that of free speech, visited me with all manner 
of contumelious epithets ; and now since I have 
213 



214 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

been in England, although I have met with 
greater kindness and courtesy on the part of 
most than I deserved, yet, on the other hand, I 
perceive that the Southern influence prevails to 
some extent in England. [Applause and up- 
roar.] It is my old acquaintance ; I understand 
it perfectly — [laughter] — and I have always 
held it to be an unfailing truth that where a 
man had a cause that would bear examination 
he was perfectly willing to have it spoken 
about. [Applause.] And when in Manchester 
I saw those huge placards : " Who is Henry 
Ward Beecher?" — [laughter, cries of "Quite 
right," and applause.] — and when in Liverpool 
I was told that there were those blood-red 
placards, purporting to say what Henry Ward 
Beecher had said, and calling upon Englishmen 
to suppress free speech — I tell you what I 
thought. I thought simply this : " I am glad 
of it." [Laughter.] Why? Because if they 
had felt perfectly secure, that you are the 
minions of the South and the slaves of slavery, 
they would have been perfectly still. [Applause 
and uproar.] And, therefore, when I saw so 
much nervous apprehension that, if I were per- 
mitted to speak — [hisses and applause] — when 
I found they were afraid to have me speak — 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 21$ 

[hisses, laughter, and " No, no ! "] — when I 
found that they considered my speaking damag- 
ing to their cause — [applause] — when I found 
that they appealed from facts and reasonings to 
mob law — [applause and uproar] — I said, no 
man need tell me what the heart and secret 
counsel of these men are. They tremble and 
are afraid. [Applause, laughter, hisses, " No, 
no ! " and a voice: " New York mob."] Now, 
personally, it is a matter of very little con- 
sequence to me whether I speak here to-night 
or not. [Laughter and cheers.] But, one thing 
is very certain, if you do permit me to speak 
here to-night you will hear very plain talking. 
[Applause and hisses.] You will not find a 
man — [interruption] — you will not find me 
to be a man that dared to speak about Great 
Britain 3,000 miles off, and then is afraid to 
speak to Great Britain when he stands on 
her shores. [Immense applause and hisses.] 
And if I do not mistake the tone and temper of 
Englishmen, they had rather have a man who 
opposes them in a manly way — [applause from 
all parts of the hall] — than a sneak that agrees 
with them in an unmanly way. [Applause and 
" Bravo ! "] Now, if I can carry you with me by 
sound convictions, I shall be immensely glad 



2l6 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

— [applause] ; but if I cannot carry you with 
me by facts and sound arguments, I do not wish 
you to go with me at all ; and ail that I ask 
is simply FAIR PLAY. [Applause, and a voice : 
"You shall have it too."] 

Those of you who are kind enough to wish 
to favor my speaking — and you will observe 
that my voice is slightly husky, from having 
spoken almost every night in succession for 
some time past, — those who wish to hear me 
will do me the kindness simply to sit still, and 
to keep still ; and I and my friends the Seces- 
sionists will make all the noise. [Laughter.] 

There are two dominant races in modern his- 
tory — the Germanic and the Romanic races. 
The Germanic races tend to personal liberty, to 
a sturdy individualism, to civil and to political 
liberty. The Romanic race tends to absolutism 
in government ; it is clannish ; it loves chief- 
tains ; it develops a- people that crave strong and 
showy governments to support and plan for 
them. The Anglo-Saxon race belongs to the 
great German family, and is a fair exponent of 
its peculiarities. The Anglo-Saxon carries self- 
government and self-development with him 
wherever he goes. Pie has popular GOVERN- 
MENT and popular INDUSTRY; for the 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 21/ 

effects of a generous civil liberty are not seen a 
whit more plain in the good order, in the intel- 
ligence, and in the virtue of a self-governing 
people, than in their amazing enterprise and 
the scope and power of their creative industry. 
The power to create riches is just as much a 
part of the Anglo-Saxon virtues as the power 
to create good order and social safety. The 
things required for prosperous labor, prosperous 
manufactures, and prosperous commerce are 
three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, 
liberty. [Hear, hear!] Though these are not 
merely the same liberty, as I shall show you. 
First, there must be liberty to follow those laws 
of business which experience has developed, 
without imposts or restrictions or governmental 
intrusions. Business simply wants to be let 
alone. [Hear, hear!] Then, secondly, there 
must be liberty to distribute and exchange 
products of industry in any market without 
burdensome tariffs, without imposts, and with- 
out vexatious regulations. There must be these 
two liberties — liberty to create wealth, as the 
makers of it think best, according to the light 
and experience which business has given them ; 
and then liberty to distribute what they have 
created without unnecessary vexatious burdens. 



2l8 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

The comprehensive law of the ideal industrial 
condition of the Avord is free manufacture and 
free trade. [Hear, hear ! A voice : " The Mor- 
rill tariff." Another voice : " IMonroe."] I 
have said there were three elements of liberty. 
The third is the necessity of an intelligent and 
free race of customers. There must be free- 
dom among producers ; there must be freedom 
among the distributors ; there must be freedom 
among the customers. It may not have oc- 
curred to you that it makes any difference what 
one's customers are, but it does in all regular 
and prolonged business. The condition of the 
customer determines how much he will buy, 
determines of what sort he will buy. Poor and 
ignorant people buy little and that of the 
poorest kind. The richest and the intelligent, 
having the more means to buy, buy the most, 
and always buy the best. Here, then, are the 
three liberties : liberty of the producer, liberty 
of the distributor, and liberty of the consumer. 
The first two need no discussion ; they have 
been long thoroughly and brilliantly illustrated 
by the political economists of Great Britain 
and by her eminent statesmen ; but it seems to 
me that enough attention has not been directed 
to the third ; and, with your patience, I will 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 219 

dwell upon that for a moment, before proceed- 
ing to other topics. 

It is a necessity of every manufacturing and 
commercial people that their customers should 
be very wealthy and intelligent. Let us put 
the subject before you in the familiar light of 
your own local experience. To whom do the 
tradesmen of Liverpool sell the most goods at 
the highest profit ? To the ignorant and poor, 
or to the educated and prosperous ? [A voice : 
" To the Southerners." Laughter.] The poor 
man buys simply for his body ; he buys food, 
he buys clothing, he buys fuel, he buys lodging. 
His rule is to buy the least and the cheapest 
that he can. He goes to the store as seldom as 
he can ; he brings away as little as he can ; 
and he buys for the least he can. [Much 
laughter.] Poverty is not a misfortune to the 
poor only who suffer it, but it is more or less a 
misfortune to all with whom he deals. On 
the other hand, a man well off — how is it with 
him ? He buys in far greater quantity. He 
can afford to do it ; he has the money to pay 
for it. He buys in far greater variety, because 
he seeks to gratify not merely physical wants, 
but also mental wants. He buys for the satis- 
faction of sentiment and taste, as well as of 



220 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

sense. He buys silk, wool, flax, cotton ; he 
buys all metals — iron, silver, gold, platinum ; 
in short he buys for all necessities and all sub- 
stances. But that is not all. He buys a better 
quality of goods. He buys richer silks, finer 
cottons, higher grained wools. Now a rich silk 
means so much skill and care of somebody's 
that has been expended upon it to make it 
finer and richer; and so of cotton and so of 
wool. That is, the price of the finer goods runs 
back to the very beginning, and remunerates 
the workman as well as the merchant. Now, 
the whole laboring community is as much in- 
terested and profited as the mere merchant, in 
this buying and selling of the higher grades in 
the greater varieties and quantities. The law 
of price is the skill ; and the amount of skill 
expended in the work is as much for the mar- 
ket as are the goods. A man comes to market 
and says: " I have a pair of hands," and he ob- 
tains the lowest wages. Another man comes 
and says : " I have something more than a 
pair of hands ; I have truth and fidelity." He 
gets a higher price. Another man comes 
and says : " I have something more ; I have 
hands, and strength, and fidelity, and skill." 
He gets more than either of the others. 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 221 

The next man comes and says : " I have got 
hands, and strength, and skill, and fidelity ; but 
my hands work more than that. They know 
how to create things for the fancy, for the affec- 
tions, for the moral sentiments"; and he gets 
more than either of the others. The last 
man comes and says : " I have all these quali- 
ties, and have them so highly that It is a pecu- 
liar genius " ; and genius carries the whole 
market and gets the highest price. [Loud ap- 
plause.] So that both the workman and the 
merchant are profited by having purchasers 
that demand quality, variety, and quantity. 
Now, if this be so in the town or the city, it 
can only be so because it is a law. This is the 
specific development of a general or universal 
law, and therefore we should expect to find it 
as true of a nation as of a city like Liverpool. 
I know that it is so, and you know that it is 
true of all the world ; and it is just as impor- 
tant to have customers educated, intelligent, 
moral, and rich out of Liverpool as it is in 
Liverpool. [Applause.] They are able to buy ; 
they want variety, they want the very best ; 
and those are the customers you want. That 
nation is the best customer that is freest, be- 
cause freedom works prosperity, industry, and 



222 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

wealth. Great Britain, then, aside from moral 
considerations, has a direct commercial and 
pecuniary interest in the liberty, civilization, 
and wealth of every nation on the globe. 
[Loud applause.] You also have an interest in 
this, because you are a moral and religious 
people. [" Oh, oh ! " laughter and applause.] 
You desire it from the highest motives ; and 
godliness is profitable in all things, having the 
promise of the life that now is, as well as of 
that which is to come ; but if there were no 
hereafter, and if man had no progress in this 
life, and if there were no question of civiliza- 
tion at all, it would be worth your while to pro- 
tect civilization and liberty, merely as a com- 
mercial speculation. To evangelize has more 
than a moral and religious import — it comes 
back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation 
that is crushed, cramped, degraded under 
despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, 
Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley, all have an in- 
terest that that nation should be free. When 
depressed and backward people demand that 
they may have a chance to rise — Hungary, 
Italy, Poland — it is a duty for humanity's sake, 
it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to 
sympathize with them ; but besides all these 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 223 

there is a material and an interested reason why 
you should sympathize with them. Pounds 
and pence join with conscience and with honor 
in this design. Now, Great Britain's chief want 
is — what ? 

They have said that your chief want is cot- 
ton. I deny it. Your chief want is consum- 
ers. [Applause and hisses.] You have got 
skill, you have got capital, and you have got 
machinery enough to manufacture goods for 
the whole population of the globe. You could 
turn out fourfold as much as you do, if you 
only had the market to sell in. It is not so 
much the want, therefore, of fabric, though 
there may be a temporary obstruction of it ; 
but the principal and increasing want — increas- 
ing from year to year — is, where shall we find 
men to buy what we can manufacture so fast ? 
[Interruption, and a voice, " The Morrill tariff," 
and applause.] Before the American war broke 
out, your warehouses were loaded with goods 
that you could not sell. [Applause and hisses.] 
You had over-manufactured; what is the mean- 
ing of over-manufacturing but this : that you 
had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster 
than you had customers to take goods off your 
hands? And you know that rich as Great 



224 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Britain is, vast as are her manufactures, if she 
could have fourfold the present demand, she 
could make fourfold riches to-morrow; and 
every political economist will tell you that your 
want is not cotton primarily, but customers. 
Therefore, the doctrine, how to make custom- 
ers, is a great deal more important to Great 
Britain than the doctrine how to raise cotton. 
It is to that doctrine I ask from you, business 
men, practical men, men of fact, sagacious Eng- 
lishmen- — to that point I ask a moment's atten- 
tion. [Shouts of " Oh, oh ! " hisses, and ap- 
plause.] There are no more continents to be 
discovered. [Hear, hear!] The market of the 
future must be found — how? There is very 
little hope of any more demand being created 
by new fields. If you are to have a better 
market there must be some kind of process 
invented to make the old fields better. [A 
voice, " Tell us something new," shouts of 
order, and interruption.] Let us look at it, 
then. You must civilize the world in order to 
make a better class of purchasers. [Interrup- 
tion.] If you were to press Italy down again 
under the feet of despotism, Italy, discouraged, 
could draw but very few supplies from you. 
But give her liberty, kindle schools throughout 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 22$ 

her valleys, spur her industry, make treaties 
with her by which she can exchange her wine, 
and her oil, and her silk for your manufactured 
goods ; and for every effort that you make in 
that direction there will come back profit to 
you by increased traffic with her. [Loud ap- 
plause.] If Hungary asks to be an unshackled 
nation — if by freedom she will rise in virtue 
and intelligence, then by freedom she will 
acquire a more multifarious industry, which she 
will be willing to exchange for your manufac- 
tures. Her liberty is to be found — where? 
You will find it in the Word of God, you will 
find it in the code of history ; but you will also 
find it in the Price Current [Hear, hear!]; and 
every free nation, every civilized people — every 
people that rises from barbarism to industry 
and intelligence, becomes a better customer. 

A savage is a man of one story, and that 
one story a cellar. When a man begins to be 
civilized, he raises another story. When you 
Christianize and civilize the man, you put story 
upon story, for you develop faculty after fac- 
ulty ; and you have to supply every story with 
your productions. The savage is a man one 
story deep ; the civilized man is thirty stories 
deep. [Applause.] Now, if you go to a lodg- 



226 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ing-liouse, where there are three or four men, 
your sales to them may, no doubt, be worth 
something; but if you go to a lodging-house 
like some of those which I saw in Edinburgh, 
which seemed to contain about twenty stories 
["Oh, oh!" and interruption], every story of 
which is full, and all who occupy buy of you — 
which is the better customer, the man who is 
drawn out, or the man who is pinched up? 
[Laughter.] Now, there is in this a great and 
sound principle of economy. ["Yah, yah!" 
from the passage outside the hall, and loud 
laughter.] If the South should be rendered in- 
dependent — [at this juncture mingled cheering 
and hissing became immense ; half the audi- 
ence rose to their feet, waving hats and hand- 
kerchiefs, and in every part of the hall there 
was the greatest commotion and uproar.] You 
have had your turn now ; now let me have 
mine again. [Loud applause and laughter.] 
It is a little inconvenient to talk against the 
wind ; but after all, if you will just keep good- 
natured — I am not going to lose my temper; 
will you watch yours } [ApplausQ.] Besides 
all that, it rests me, and gives me a chance, you 
know, to get my breath. [Applause and hisses.] 
And I think that the bark of those men is 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 22/ 

worse than their bite. They do not mean any 
harm — they don't know any better, [Loud 
laughter, applause, hisses, and continued up- 
roar.] I was saying, when these responses 
broke in, that it was worth our while to consider 
both alternatives. What will be the result if 
this present struggle shall eventuate in the 
separation of America, and making the South 
— [loud applause, hisses, hooting, and cries of 
" Bravo ! "] — a slave territory exclusively, — 
[cries of "No, no!" and laughter] — and the 
North a free territory, — what will be the final 
result ? You will lay the foundation for carry- 
ing the slave population clear through to the 
Pacific Ocean. This is the first step. There is 
not a man that has been a leader of the South 
any time within these twenty years, that has 
not had this for a plan. It was for this that 
Texas was invaded, first by colonists, next by 
marauders, until it was wrested from Mexico. 
It was for this that they engaged in the Mexi- 
can War itself, by which the vast territory 
reaching to the Pacific was added to the Union. 
Never for a moment have they given up the 
plan of spreading the American institutions, as 
they call them, straight through toward the 
West, until the slave, who has washed his feet 



228 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

in the Atlantic, shall be carried to wash them 
in the Pacific. [Cries of " Question," and up- 
roar.] There ! I have got that statement out, 
and you cannot put it back. [Laughter and 
applause.] Now, let us consider the prospect. 
If the South becomes a slave empire, what rela- 
tion will it have to you as a customer? [A 
voice : " Or any other man." Laughter.] It 
would be an empire of 12,000,000 of people. 
Now, of these, 8,000,000 are white, and 4,000,- 
000 black. [A voice : " How many have you 
got ? " Applause and laughter. Another voice : 
" Free your own slaves."] Consider that one 
third of the whole are the miserably poor, un- 
buying blacks. [Cries of " No, no ! " " Yes, yes ! " 
and interruption.] You do not manufacture 
much for them. [Hisses, " Oh ! " " No."] You 
have not got machinery coarse enough. [Laugh- 
ter, and " No."] Your labor is too skilled by 
far to manufacture bagging and linsey-woolsey. 
[A Southerner: ''We are going to free them, 
every one."] Then you and I agree exactly. 
[Laughter.] One other third consists of a poor, 
unskilled, degraded white population ; and the 
remaining one third, which is a large allowance, 
we will say, intelligent and rich. 

Now here are twelve million of people, and 



ADDHESS A T LIVERPOOL. 229 

only one third of them are customers that can 
afford to buy the kind of goods that you bring 
to market. [Interruption and uproar.] My 
friends, I saw a man once, who was a Httle late 
at a railway station, chase an express train. He 
did not catch it. [Laughter.] If you are going 
to stop this meeting, you have got to stop it be- 
fore I speak; for after I have got the things 
out, you may chase as long as you please — you 
would not catch them. [Laughter and interrup- 
tion.] But there is luck in leisure ; I 'm going 
to take it easy. [Laughter.] Two thirds of the 
population of the Southern States to-day are 
non-purchasers of English goods. [A voice : 
" No, they are not " ; " No, no ! " and uproar.] 
Now you must recollect another fact — namely, 
that this is going on clear through to the Pa- 
crfic Ocean ; and if by sympathy or help you es- 
tablish a slave empire, you sagacious Britons — 
[" Oh, oh ! " and hooting] — if you like it better, 
then, I will leave the adjective out — [laughter. 
Hear ! and applause] — are busy in favoring the 
establishment of an empire from ocean to ocean 
that should have fewest customers and the 
largest non-buying population. [Applause, 
" No, no ! " A voice : " I thought it was the 
happy people that populated fastest."] 



230 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Now, what can England make for the poor 
white population of such a future empire, and 
for her slave population ? What carpets, what 
linens, what cottons can you sell them ? What 
machines, what looking-glasses, what combs, 
what leather, what books, what pictures, what 
engravings ? [A voice : " We '11 sell them 
ships."] You may sell ships to a few, but what 
ships can you sell to two thirds of the popula- 
tion of poor whites and blacks? [Applause.] 
A little bagging and a little linsey-woolsey, a 
few whips and manacles, are all that you can 
sell for the slave. [Great applause and uproar.] 
This very day, in the slave States of America 
there are eight millions out of twelve mil- 
lions that are not, and cannot be your custo- 
mers from the very laws of trade. [A voice : 
" Then how are they clothed ? " and interrrup- 
tion.] * * * 

But I know that you say, you cannot help 
sympathizing with a gallant people. [Hear, 
hear !] They are the weaker people, the minor- 
ity ; and you cannot help going with the 
minority who are struggling for their rights 
against the majority. Nothing could be more 
generous, when a weak party stands for its own 
legitimate rights against imperious pride and 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 23 1 

power, than to sympathize with the weak. But 
who ever sympathized with a weak thief, be- 
cause three constables had got hold of him? 
[Hear, hear!] And yet the one thief in three 
policemen's hands is the weaker party. I sup- 
pose you would sympathize with him. [Hear, 
hear ! laughter, and applause.] Why, when that 
infamous king of Naples — Bomba, was driven 
into Gaeta by Garibaldi with his immortal band 
of patriots, and Cavour sent against him the 
army of Northern Italy, who was the weaker 
party then ? The tyrant and his minions ; and 
the majority was with the noble Italian patriots, 
struggling for liberty. I never heard that Old 
England sent deputations to King Bomba, and 
yet his troops resisted bravely there. [Laugh- 
ter and interruption.] To-day the majority of 
the people of Rome is with Italy. Nothing but 
French bayonets keeps her from going back to 
the kingdom of Italy, to which she belongs. 
Do you sympathize with the minority in Rome 
or the majority in Italy ? [A voice : " With 
Italy."] To-day the South is the minority in 
America, and they are fighting for independence ! 
For what ? [Uproar. A voice : " Three cheers 
for independence ! " and hisses.] I could wish 
§0 much bravery had a better cause, and that 



«» 



232 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

SO much self-denial had been less deluded ; that 
the poisonous and venomous doctrine of State 
rights might have been kept aloof ; that so 
many gallant spirits, such as Jackson, might still 
have lived. [Great applause and loud cheers, 
again and again renewed.] The force of these 
facts, historical and incontrovertible, cannot be 
broken, except by diverting attention by an at- 
tack upon the North. It is said that the North 
is fighting for Union, and not for emancipation. 
The North is fighting for Union, for that ensures 
emancipation. [Loud cheers, " Oh, oh ! " " No, 
no ! " and cheers.] A great many men say to 
ministers of the Gospel : '' You pretend to be 
preaching and working for the love of the peo- 
ple. Why, you are all the time preaching for 
the sake of the Church." What does the min- 
ister say ? " It is by means of the Church that 
we help the people," and when men say that we 
are fighting for the Union, I too say we are fight- 
ing for the Union. [Hear, hear ! and a voice : 
" That 's right."] But the motive determines 
the value ; and why are we fighting for the 
Union ? Because we never shall forget the testi- 
mony of our enemies. They have gone off de- 
claring that the Union in the hands of the North 
was fatal to slavery. [Loud applause.] There 



1^ 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 233 

is testimony in court for you. [A voice : " See 
that," and laughter.] * * * 

In the first place I am ashamed to confess 
that such was the thoughtlessness — [interrup- 
tion] — such was the stupor of the North — 
[renewed interruption] — you will get a word at 
a time ; to-morrow will let folks see what it is 
you don't want to hear — that for a period of 
twenty-five years she went to sleep, and per- 
mitted herself to be drugged and poisoned with 
the Southern prejudice against black men. 
[Applause and uproar.] The evil was made 
worse, because, when any object whatever has 
caused anger between political parties, a politi- 
cal animosity arises against that object, no 
matter how innocent in itself ; no matter what 
were the original influences which excited the 
quarrel. Thus the colored man has been the 
football between the two parties in the North, 
and has suffered accordingly. I confess it to 
my shame. But I am speaking now on my 
own ground, for I began twenty-five years ago, 
with a small party, to combat the unjust dislike 
of the colored man. [Loud applause, dissen- 
sion, and uproar. The interruption at this 
point became so violent that the friends of Mr. 
Beecher throughout the hall rose to their feet, 



234 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

waving hats and handkerchiefs, and renewing 
their shouts of applause. The interruption 
lasted some minutes.] Well, I have lived to 
see a total revolution in the Northern feeling — 
I stand here to bear solemn witness of that. 
It is not my opinion ; it is my knowledge. 
[Great uproar.] Those men who undertook to 
stand up for the rights of all men — black as 
well as white — have increased in number ; and 
now what party in the North represents those 
men that resist the evil prejudices of past 
years ? The Republicans are that party. 
[Loud applause.] And who are those men in 
the North that have oppressed the negro ? 
They are tJie Peace Democrats ; and the prejudice 
for zvJiicJi in England yon are attempting to pun- 
ish me, is a prejudice raised by the men zvho have 
opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Dem- 
ocrats abuse the negro. I defended him, and 
they mobbed me for doing it. Oh, justice ! 
[Loud laughter, applause, and hisses.] This is 
as if a man should commit an assault, maim 
and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being 
called in should begin to dress his wounds, and 
by and by a policeman should come and collar 
the surgeon and haul him off to prison on 
account of the wounds which he was healing. 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 235 

Now, I told you I would not flinch from any 
thing. I am going to read you some questions 
that were sent after me from Glasgow, pur- 
porting to be from a workingman. [Great in- 
terruption.] If those pro-slavery interrupters 
think they will tire me out, they will do more 
than eight millions in America could. [Ap- 
plause and renewed interruption.] I was read- 
ing a question on your side too. " Is it not a 
fact that in most of the Northern States laws 
exist precluding negroes from equal civil and 
political rights with the whites ? That in the 
State of New York the negro has to be the 
possessor of at least two hundred and fifty dol- 
lars' worth of property to entitle him to the 
privileges of a white citizen ? That in some of 
the Northern States the colored man, whether 
bond or free, is by law excluded altogether, 
and not suffered to enter the State limits, 
under severe penalties ? and is not Mr. Lin- 
coln's own State one of them ? and in view of 
the fact that the $20,000,000 compensation 
which was promised to Missouri in aid of 
emancipation was defeated in the last Congress 
(the strongest Republican Congress that ever 
assembled), what has the North done toward 
emancipation ? " Now, then, there 's a dose 



236 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

for you. [A voice : " Answer it."] And I will 
address myself to the answering of it. And 
first, the bill for emancipation in Missouri, to 
which this money was denied, was a bill which 
was drawn by what we call " log-rollers," who 
inserted in it an enormously disproportioned 
price for the slaves. The Republicans offered 
to give them $10,000,000 for the slaves in Mis- 
souri, and they outvoted it because they could 
not get $12,000,000. Already half the slave 
population had been " run " down South, and 
yet they came up to Congress to get $12,000,- 
000 for what was not worth ten millions, nor 
even eight millions. Now as to those States 
that had passed " black " laws, as we call them ; 
they are filled with Southern emigrants. The 
southern parts of Ohio, the southern part of 
Indiana, where I myself lived for years, and 
which I knew like a book, the southern part of 
Illinois, where Mr. Lincoln lives — [great uproar] 
— these parts are largely settled by emigrants 
from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, 
and North Carolina, and it was their vote, or 
the Northern votes pandering for political rea- 
sons to theirs, that passed in those States the 
infamous "black" laws; and the Republicans 
in these States have a record, clean and white, 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 237 

as having opposed these laws in every instance 
as " infamous." Now as to the State of New 
York ; it is asked whether a negro is not 
obhged to have a certain freehold property, or 
a certain amount of property, before he can 
vote. It is so still in North Carolina and 
Rhode Island for white folks — it is so in New 
York State. [Mr, Beecher's voice slightly 
failed him here, and he was interrupted by a 
person who tried to imitate him. Cries of 
"■ Shame ! " and " Turn him out ! "] I am not 
undertaking to say that these faults of the 
North, which were brought upon them by the 
bad example and influence of the South, are 
all cured ; but I do say that they are in process 
of cure which promises, if unimpeded by for- 
eign influence, to make all such odious distinc- 
tions vanish. 

There is another fact that I wish to allude to 
— not for the sake of reproach or blame, but 
by way of claiming your more lenient consider- 
ation—and that is, that slavery was entailed 
upon us by your action. [Hear, hear!] Against 
the earnest protests of the colonists the then 
government of Great Britain — I will concede 
not knowing what were the mischiefs — igno- 
rantly, but in point of fact, forced slave traffic 



238 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

on the unwilling colonists. [Great uproar, in 
the midst of which one individual was lifted up 
and carried out of the room amidst cheers and 
hisses.] 

The Chairman : If you would only sit 
down no disturbance would take place. 
The disturbance having subsided, 
Mr Beecher said : I was going to ask you, 
suppose a child is born with hereditary disease ; 
suppose this disease was entailed upon him by 
parents who had contracted it by their own 
misconduct, would it be fair that those parents 
that had brought into the world the diseased 
child, should rail at that child because it was 
diseased. ["No, no!"] Would not the child 
have a right to turn round and say: " Father, it 
was your fault that I had it, and you ought to 
be pleased to be patient with my deficiencies." 
[Applause and hisses, and cries of " Order ! " 
Great interruption and great disturbance here 
took place on the right of the platform ; and the 
chairman said that if the persons around the 
unfortunate individual who had caused the dis- 
turbance would allow him to speak alone, but 
not assist him in making the disturbance, it 
might soon be put an end to. The interruption 
continued until another person was carried out 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 239 

of the hall.] Mr. Beecher continued : I do not 
ask that you should justify slavery in us, because 
it was wrong in you two hundred years ago ; but 
having ignorantly been the means of fixing it 
upon us, now that we are struggling with mor- 
tal struggles to free ourselves from it, we have 
a right to your tolerance, your patience, and 
charitable constructions. 

No man can unveil the future ; no man can 
tell what revolutions are about to break upon 
the world ; no man can tell what destiny be- 
longs to France, nor to any of the European 
powers ; but one thing is certain, that in the 
exigencies of the future there will be combina- 
tions and recombinations, and that those 
nations that are of the same faith, the same 
blood, and the same substantial interests, ought 
not to be alienated from each other, but ought 
to stand together. [Immense cheering and 
hisses.] I do not say that you ought not to be 
in the most friendly alliance with France or 
with Germany ; but I do say that your own 
children, the offspring of England, ought to be 
nearer to you than any people of strange 
tongue. [A voice : '' Degenerate sons," ap- 
plause and hisses ; another voice : " What about 
the Trent f "] If there had been any feelings 



240 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

of bitterness in America, let me tell you that 
they had been excited, rightly or wrongly, 
under the impression that Great Britain was 
croing to intervene between us and our own 
lawful struggle. [A voice : " No ! " and ap- 
plause.] With the evidence that there is no 
such intention all bitter feelings Avill pass away. 
[Applause.] We do not agree with the recent 
doctrine of neutrality as a question of law. 
But it is past, and we are not disposed to raise 
that question. We accept it now as a fact, and 
we say that the utterance of Lord Russell at 
Blairgowrie — [Applause, hisses, and a voice: 
"What about Lord Brougham?"] — together 
with the declaration of the government in stop- 
ping war-steamers here — [great uproar, and 
applause] — has gone far toward quieting every 
fear and removing every apprehension from our 
minds. [Uproar and shouts of applause.] And 
now in the future it is the work of every good 
man and patriot not to create divisions, but to 
do the things that will make for peace. ['* Oh, 
oh ! " and laughter.] On our part it shall be 
done. [Applause and hisses, and "No, no!"] 
On your part it ought to be done ; and when in 
any of the convulsions that come upon the 
world. Great Britain finds herself struggling 



ADDRESS AT LIVERPOOL. 24 1 

single-handed against the gigantic powers that 
spread oppression and darkness — [applause, 
hisses, and uproar] — there ought to be such 
cordiality that she can turn and say to her first- 
born and most illustrious child, " Come ! " 
[Hear, hear! applause, tremendous cheers, and 
uproar.] I will not say that England cannot 
again, as hitherto, single-handed manage any 
power — [applause and uproar] — but I will say 
that England and America together for 
religion and liberty — [A voice : " Soap, soap," 
uproar, and great applause] — are a match for 
the world. [Applause; a voice : "They don't 
want any more soft soap."] Now, gentlemen 
and ladies — [A voice : " Sam Slick " ; and an- 
other voice : Ladies and gentlemen, if you 
please,"] — when I came I was asked whether I 
would answer questions, and I very readily con- 
sented to do so, as I had in other places; but I 
will tell you it was because I expected to have 
the opportunity of speaking with some sort of 
ease and quiet. [A voice : " So you have."] I 
have for an hour and a half spoken against a 
storm — [Hear, hear ! ] — and you yourselves are 
witnesses that, by the interruption, I have been 
obliged to strive with my voice, so that I no 
longer have the power to control this assembly. 



242 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

[Applause.] And although I am in spirit per- 
fectly willing to answer any question, and more 
than glad of the chance, yet I am by this very 
unnecessary opposition to-night incapacitated 
physically from doing it. Ladies and gentle- 
men, I bid you good-evening. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



THE GETTYSBURGH ADDRESS, NOVEMBER 19, 1863. 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
conceived in hberty, and dedicated to the pro- 
position that all men are created equal. Now 
we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived 
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are 
met on a great battle-field of that war. We 
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as 
a final resting-place for those who here gave 
their lives that that nation might live. It is 
altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, 
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this 
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
struggled here, have consecrated it far above 
our power to add or detract. The world will 
little note, nor long remember, what we say 
here, but it can never forget what they did 
243 



244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

here. It is for us, the Hving, rather to be dedi- 
cated here to the unfinished work which they 
who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- 
vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us, that from 
these honored dead we take increased devotion 
to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion ; that we here highly re- 
solve that these dead shall not have died in 
vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have 
a new birth of freedom, and that government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1 865. 

Fellow-Countrymen : 

At this second appearing to take the oath of 
the Presidential office, there is less occasion for 
an extended address than there was at first. 
Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a 
course to be pursued seemed very fitting and 
proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, 
during which public declarations have been 
constantly called forth on every point and 
phase of the great contest which still absorbs 
the attention and engrosses the energies of the 
nation, little that is new could be presented. 

The progress of our arms, upon which all else 
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public 
as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satis- 
factory and encouraging to all. With high 
hope for the future, no prediction in regard to 
it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four 
years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed 

245 



246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all 
sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address 
was being delivered from this place, devoted alto- 
gether to saving the Union without war, insur- 
gent agents were in the city seeking to destroy 
it with war — seeking to dissolve the Union and 
divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties 
deprecated war, but one of them would make 
war rather than let the nation survive, and the 
other would accept war rather than let it perish, 
and the war came. One eighth of the whole 
population were colored slaves, not distributed 
generally over the Union, but localized in the 
Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a 
peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that 
this interest was somehow the cause of the war. 
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this 
interest was the object for which the insurgents 
would rend the Union by war, while the govern- 
ment claimed no right to do more than to 
restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the mag- 
nitude or the duration which it has already at- 
tained. Neither anticipated that the cause of 
the conflict might cease when, or even before 
the conflict itself should cease. Each looked 
for an easier triumph, and a result less funda- 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 247 

mental and astounding. Both read the same 
Bible and pray to the same God, and each in- 
vokes His aid against the other. It may seem 
strange that any men should dare to ask a just 
God's assistance in wringing their bread from 
the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge 
not, that we be not judged. The prayer of 
both could not be answered. That of neither 
has been answered fully. The Almighty has 
His own purposes. Woe unto the world be- 
cause of offences, for it must needs be that 
offences come, but woe to that man by whom 
the offence cometh. If we shall suppose that 
American slavery is one of those offences which, 
in the providence of God, must needs come, 
but which having continued through His ap- 
pointed time, He now wills to remove, and that 
He gives to both North and South this terrible 
war as the woe due to those by whom the of- 
fence came, shall we discern there any depar- 
ture from those Divine attributes which the 
believers in a living God always ascribe to 
Him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we 
pray, that this mighty scourge of war may 
speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it 
continue until all the wealth piled by the bonds- 
man's two hundred and fifty years of unre- 



248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 
another drawn with the sword, as was said three 
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that 
the judgments of the Lord are true and right- 
eous altogether. 

With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us 
to see the right, let us finish the work we are 
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle, and for 
his widow and his orphans, to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace 
among ourselves and with all nations. 



HENRY WINTER DAVIS, 

OF MARYLAND. 

(born 1817, DIED 1865.) 



ON RECONSTRUCTION ; THE FIRST REPUBLICAN 

THEORY ; HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

MARCH 22, 1864. 

Mr. Speaker : 

The bill which I am directed by the com- 
mittee on the rebellious States to report is one 
which provides for the restoration of civil gov- 
ernment in States whose governments have 
been overthrown. It prescribes such conditions 
as will secure not only civil government to the 
people of the rebellious States, but will also 
secure to the people of the United States per- 
manent peace after the suppression of the re- 
bellion. The bill challenges the support of all 
who consider slavery the cause of the rebellion, 
and that in it the embers of rebellion will 
always smoulder ; of those who think that free- 
249 



250 HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

dom and permanent peace are inseparable, and 
who are determined, so far as their constitu- 
tional authority will allow them, to secure these 
fruits by adequate legislation. ^ * * It is 
entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon 
this side of the House, whatever their views 
may be of the nature of the rebellion, and the 
relation in which it has placed the people and 
States in rebellion toward the United States ; 
not less of those who think that the rebellion 
has placed the citizens of the rebel States 
beyond the protection of the Constitution, and 
that Congress, therefore, has supreme power 
over them as conquered enemies, than of that 
other class who think that they have not ceased 
to be citizens and States of the United States, 
though incapable of exercising political privi- 
leges under the Constitution, but that Congress 
is charged with a high political power by the 
Constitution to guarantee republican govern- 
ments in the States, and that this is the proper 
time and the proper mode of exercising it. It 
is also entitled to the favorable consideration 
of gentlemen upon the other side of the House 
who honestly and deliberately express their 
judgment that slavery is dead. To them it 
puts the question whether it is not advisable to 



RECOaVS TR UCTIOX. 2 5 I 

bury it out of sight, that its ghost may no 
longer stalk abroad to frighten us from our pro- 
priety. 

What is the nature of this case with which 
we have to deal, the evil we must remedy, the 
danger we must avert ? In other words, what 
is that monster of political wrong which is 
called secession ? It is not, Mr. Speaker, domes- 
tic violence, within the meaning of that clause 
of the Constitution, for the violence was the 
act of the people of those States through their 
governments, and was the offspring of their free 
and unforced will. It is not invasion, in the 
meaning of the Constitution, for no State has 
been invaded against the will of the govern- 
ment of the State by any power except the 
United States marching to overthrow the 
usurpers of its territory. It is, therefore, the 
act of the people of the States, carrying with it 
all the consequences of such an act. And there- 
fore it must be either a legal revolution, which 
makes them independent, and makes of the 
United States a foreign country, or it is a 
usurpation against the authority of the United 
States, the erection of governments which do 
not recognize the Constitution of the United 
States, which the Constitution does not recog- 



252 HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

nize, and, therefore, not republican govern- 
ments of the States in rebellion. The latter is 
the view which all parties take of it. I do not 
understand that any gentleman on the other 
side of the House says that any rebel govern- 
ment which does not recognize the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, and which is not 
recognized by Congress, is a State government 
within the meaning of the Constitution. Still 
less can it be said that there is a State govern- 
ment, republican or unrepublican, in the State 
of Tennessee, where there is no government 
of any kind, no civil authority, no organized 
form of administration except that represented 
by the flag of the United States, obeying the 
will and under the orders of the military officer 
in command. * * * Those that are here 
represented are the only governments existing 
within the limits of the United States. Those 
that are not here represented are not govern- 
ments of the States, republican under the Con- 
stitution. And if they be not, then they are 
military usurpations, inaugurated as the per- 
manent governments of the States, contrary to 
the supreme law of the land, arrayed in arms 
against the Government of the United States ; 
and it is the duty, the fiirst and highest duty, of 



RECONSTRUCTION. 253 

the government to suppress and expel them. 
Congress must either expel or recognize and 
support them. If it do not guarantee them, it 
is bound to expel them ; and they who are not 
ready to suppress are bound to recognize them. 

We are now engaged in suppressing a military 
usurpation of the authority of the State gov- 
ernments. When that shall have been accom- 
plished, there will be no form of State authority 
in existence which Congress can recognize. 
Our success will be the overthrow of all sem- 
blance of government in the rebel States, The 
Government of the United States is then in 
fact the only government existing in those 
States, and it is there charged to guarantee 
them republican governments. 

What jurisdiction does the duty of guaran- 
teeing a republican government confer under 
such circumstances upon Congress ? What 
right does it give? What laws may it pass? 
What objects may it accomplish ? What con- 
ditions may it insist upon, and what judgment 
may it exercise in determining what it will do ? 
The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the 
right to pass all laws necessary and proper to 
guarantee. The duty of guaranteeing means 
the duty to accomplish the result. It means 



254 HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

that the repubHcan government shall exist. 
It means that every opposition to republican 
government shall be put down. It means that 
every thing inconsistent with the permanent 
continuance of republican government shall be 
weeded out. It places in the hands of Con- 
gress to say what is and what is not, with all 
the light of experience and all the lessons of 
the past, inconsistent, in its judgment, with the 
permanent continuance of republican govern- 
ment ; and if, in its judgment, any form of 
policy is radically and inherently inconsistent 
with the permanent and enduring peace of the 
country, with the permanent supremacy of re- 
publican government, and it have the manliness 
to say so, there is no power, judicial or executive, 
in the United States that can even question 
this judgment but the people; and they can do 
it only by sending other Representatives here 
to undo our work. The very language of the 
Constitution, and the necessary logic of the 
case, involve that consequence. The denial of 
the right of secession means that all the terri- 
tory of the United States shall remain under 
the jurisdiction of the Constitution. If there 
can be no State government which does not 
recognize the Constitution, and which the 



RECONSTRUCTION. 255 

authorities of the United States do not recog- 
nize, then there are these alternatives, and 
these only : the rebel States must be governed 
by Congress till they submit and form a State 
government under the Constitution ; or Con- 
gress must recognize State governments which 
do not recognize either Congress or the Consti- 
tution of the United States ; or there must be 
an entire absence of all government in the rebel 
States — and that is anarchy. To recognize a 
government which does not recognize the Con- 
stitution is absurd, for a government is not a 
constitution ; and the recognition of a State 
government means the acknowledgment of men 
as governors and legislators and judges, actually 
invested with power to make laws, to judge of 
crimes, to convict the citizens of other States, 
to demand the surrender of fugitives from 
justice, to arm and command the militia, to 
require the United States to repress all opposi- 
tion to its authority, and to protect it against 
invasion — against our own armies ; whose Sena- 
tors and Representatives are entitled to seats 
in Congress, and whose electoral votes must be 
counted in the election of the President of a 
government which they disown and defy. To 
accept the alternative of anarchy as the consti- 



256 HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

tutional condition of a State is to assert the 
failure of the Constitution and the end of 
repubhcan government. Until, therefore, Con- 
gress recognize a State government, organized 
under its auspices, there is no government in 
the rebel States except the authority of Con- 
gress. * * * When military opposition shall 
have been suppressed, not merely paralyzed, 
driven into a corner, pushed back, but gone, 
the horrid vision of civil war vanished from the 
South, then call upon the people to reorganize 
in their own way, subject to the conditions that 
we think essential to our permanent peace, and 
to prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion 
— a republican government in the form that the 
people of the United States can agree to. 

Now, for that purpose there are three modes 
indicated. One is to remove the cause of the 
war by an alteration of the Constitution of the 
United States, prohibiting slavery everywhere 
within its limits. That, sir, goes to the root of 
the matter, and should consecrate the nation's 
triumph. But there are thirty-four States ; 
three fourths of them would be twenty-six. I 
believe there are twenty-five States represented 
in this Congress ; so that we on that basis can- 
not change the Constitution. It is, therefore, 



RECONSTRUCTION. 257 

a condition precedent in that view of the case 
that more States shall have governments organ- 
ized within them. If it be assumed that the 
basis of calculation shall be three fourths of the 
States now represented in Congress, I agree to 
that construction of the Constitution. * * * 
But, under any circumstances, even upon that ba- 
sis it will be difficult to find three fourths of the 
States, with New Jersey, or Kentucky, or Mary- 
land, or Delaware, or other States that might 
be mentioned, opposed to it, under existing 
auspices, to adopt such a clause of the Consti- 
tution after we shall have agreed to it. If 
adopted it still leaves all laws necessary to the 
ascertainment of the will of the people, and all 
restrictions on the return to power of the lead- 
ers of the rebellion, wholly unprovided for. 
The amendment of the Constitution meets my 
hearty approval, but it is not a remedy for the 
evils we must deal with. 

The next plan is that inaugurated by the 
President of the United States, in the procla- 
mation of the 8th December (1863), called the 
amnesty proclamation. That proposes no guar- 
dianship of the United States over the reorgani- 
zation of the governments, no law to prescribe 
who shall vote, no civil functionaries to see that 



258 HENRY WINTER DAVIS. 

the law is faithfully executed, no supervising 
authority to control and judge of the election. 
But if in any manner by the toleration of mar-^ 
tial law, lately proclaimed the fundamental law, 
under the dictation of any military authority, 
or under the prescription of a provost marshal, 
something in the form of a government shall be 
presented, represented to rest on the votes of 
one tenth of the population, the President will 
recognize that, provided it does not contravene 
the proclamation of freedom and the laws of Con- 
gress ; and to secure that an oath is exacted. 
There is no guaranty of law to watch over the 
organization of that government. It may be 
recognized by the military power, and not rec- 
ognized by the civil power, so that it would 
have a doubtful existence, half civil and half 
military, neither a temporary government by 
law of Congress nor a State government, some- 
thing as unknown to the Constitution as the 
rebel government that refuses to recognize it. 
The only prescription is that it shall not con- 
travene the provisions of the proclamation. 
Sir, if that proclamation be valid, then we are 
relieved from all trouble on that score. But if 
that proclamation be not valid, then the oath to 
support it is without legal sanction, for the 



RECONSTRUCTION. 259 

President can ask no man to bind himself by an 
oath to support an unfounded proclamation or 
an unconstitutional law even for a moment, still 
less after it shall have been declared void by 
the Supreme Court of the United States. 

By the bill we propose to preclude the judicial 
question by the solution of a political ques- 
tion. How so? By the paramount power of 
Congress to reorganize governments in those 
States, to impose such conditions as it thinks 
necessary to secure the permanence of republi- 
can government, to refuse to recognize any 
governments there which do not prohibit slavery 
forever. Ay, gentlemen, take the responsi- 
bility to say in the face of those who clamor for 
the speedy recognition of governments toler- 
ating slavery, that the safety of the people of 
the United States is the supreme law ; that 
their will is the supreme rule of law, and that 
we are authorized to pronounce their will on 
this subject. Take the responsibility to say 
that we will revise the judgments of our ances- 
tors ; that we have experience written in blood 
which they had not ; that we find now what 
they darkly doubted, that slavery is really, radi- 
cally inconsistent with the permanence of re- 
publican governments ; and that being charged 



26o HENR Y WINTER DA VIS. 

by the supreme law of the land on our con- 
science and judgment to guarantee, that is to 
continue, maintain and enforce, if it exist, to 
institute and restore, when overthrown, repub- 
lican government throughout the broad limits 
of the republic, we will weed out every element 
of their policy which we think incompatible 
with its permanence and endurance. The pur- 
pose of the bill is to preclude the judicial ques- 
tion of the validity and effect of the President's 
proclamation by the decision of the political 
authority in reorganizing the State govern- 
ments. It makes the rule of decision the pro- 
visions of the State constitution, which, when 
recognized by Congress, can be questioned in 
no court ; and it adds to the authority of the 
proclamation the sanction of Congress. If 
gentlemen say that the Constitution does not 
bear that construction, we will go before the 
people of the United States on that question, 
and by their judgment we will abide. 



GEORGE H. PENDLETON, 

OF OHIO. 
(born 1825.) 



ON RECONSTRUCTION ; THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY ; 
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 4, 1 864. 

The gentleman [Mr. H. W. Davis] maintains 
two propositions, which lie at the very basis of 
his views on this subject. He has explained 
them to the House, and enforced them on 
other occasions. He maintains that, by reason 
of their secession, the seceded States and their 
citizens " have not ceased to be citizens and 
States of the United States, though incapable 
of exercising political privileges under the Con- 
stitution, but that Congress is charged with a 
high political power by the Constitution to 
guarantee republican government in the States, 
and that this is the proper time and the proper 
mode of exercising it." This act of revolution 
on the part of the seceding States has evoked 
the most extraordinary theories upon the rela- 
261 



262 GEORGE II. PENDLETON. 

tions of the States to the Federal Government. 
This theory of the gentleman is one of them. 

The ratification of the Constitution by Vir- 
ginia established the relation between herself 
and the Federal Government ; it created the 
link between her and all the States ; it an- 
nounced her assumption of the duties, her title 
to the rights, of the confederating States ; it 
proclaimed her interest in, her power over, her 
obedience to, the common agent of all the 
States. If Virginia had never ordained that 
ratification, she would have been an indepen- 
dent State ; the Constitution would have been 
as perfect and the union between the ratifying 
States would have been as complete as they 
now are. Virginia repeals that ordinance, an- 
nuls that bond of union, breaks that link of 
confederation. She repeals but a single law, 
repeals it by the action of a sovereign conven- 
tion, leaves her constitution, her laws, her politi- 
cal and social polity untouched. And the 
gentleman from Maryland tells us that the 
effect of this repeal is not to destroy the vigor 
of that law, but to subvert the State govern- 
ment, and to render the citizens " incapable of 
exercising political privileges " ; that the Union 
remains, but that one party to it has thereby 



RE CO.VS TR UC TION. 263 

lost its corporate existence, and the other has 
advanced to the control and government of it. 

Sir, this cannot be. Gentlemen must not 
palter in a double sense. These acts of seces- 
sion are either valid or invalid. If they are 
valid, they separated the State from the Union. 
If they are invalid, they are void ; they have 
no effect ; the State ofificers who act upon 
them are rebels to the Federal Government ; 
the States are not destroyed ; their consti- 
tutions are not abrogated ; their officers are 
committing illegal acts, for which they are 
liable to punishment ; the States have never 
left the Union, but, as soon as their officers 
shall perform their duties or other officers 
shall assume their places, will again perform 
the duties imposed, and enjoy the privileges 
conferred, by the Federal compact, and this 
not by virtue of a hew ratification of the Con- 
stitution, nor a new admission by the Federal 
Government, but by virtue of the original rati- 
fication, and the constant, uninterrupted main- 
tenance of position in the Federal Union since 
that date. 

Acts of secession are not invalid to destroy 
the Union, and valid to destroy the State gov- 
ernments and the political privileges of their 



264 GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 

citizens. We have heard much of the twofold 
relations which citizens of the seceded States 
may hold to the Federal Government — that 
they may be at once belligerents and rebellious 
citizens. I believe there are some judicial de- 
cisions to that effect. Sir, it is impossible. 
The Federal Government may possibly have 
the right to elect in which relation it will deal 
with them ; it cannot deal at one and the same 
time in inconsistent relations. Belligerents, 
being captured, are entitled to be treated as 
prisoners of war ; rebellious citizens are liable to 
be hanged. The private property of belligerents, 
according to the rules of modern war, shall not 
be taken without compensation ; the property 
of rebellious citizens is liable to confiscation. 
Belligerents are not amenable to the local crim- 
inal law, nor to the jurisdiction of the courts 
which administer it ; rebellions citizens are, and 
the officers are bound to enforce the law and 
exact the penalty of its infraction. The seceded 
States are either in the Union or out of it. If 
in the Union, their constitutions are untouched, 
their State governments are maintained, their 
citizens are entitled to all political rights, ex- 
cept so far as they may be deprived of them 
by the criminal law which they have infracted. 



RECONSTRUCTION. 265 

This seems incomprehensible to the gentle- 
man from Maryland. In his view, the whole 
State government centres in the men who ad- 
minister it, so that, when they administer it un- 
wisely, or put it in antagonism to the Federal 
Government, the State government is dissolved, 
the State constitution is abrogated, and the State 
is left, in fact and in form, dc jure and de facto, in 
anarchy, except so far as the Federal Govern- 
ment may rightfully intervene. * * * I submit 
that these gentlemen do not see with their 
usual clearness of vision. If, by a plague or 
other visitation of God, every of^cer of a State 
government should at the same moment die, so 
that not a single person clothed with official 
power should remain, would the State govern- 
ment be destroyed ? Not at all. For the mo- 
ment it would not be administered ; but as soon 
as officers were elected, and assumed their re- 
spective duties, it would be instantly in full 
force and vigor. 

If these States are out of the Union, their 
State governments are still in force, unless 
otherwise changed ; their citizens are to the 
Federal Government as foreigners, and it has in 
relation to them the same rights, and none 
other, as it had in relation to British sub- 



266 GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 

jects in the war of 1 812, or to the Mexicans in 
1846. Whatever may be the true relation of 
the seceding States, the Federal Government 
derives no power in relation to them or their 
citizens from the provision of the Constitution 
now under consideration, but, in the one case, 
derives all its power from the duty of enforcing 
the " supreme law of the land," and in the other, 
from the power " to declare war." 

The second proposition of the gentleman 
from Maryland is this — I use his language : 
" That clause vests in the Congress of the 
United States a plenary, supreme, unlimited 
political jurisdiction, paramount over courts, 
subject only to the judgment of the people of 
the United States, embracing within its scope 
every legislative measure necessary and proper 
to make it effectual ; and what is necessary and 
proper the Constitution refers in the first place 
to our judgment, subject to no revision but that 
of the people." 

The gentleman states his case too strongly. 
The duty imposed on Congress is doubtless im- 
portant, but Congress has no right to use a 
means of performing it forbidden by the Con- 
stitution, no matter how necessary or proper it 
might be thought to be. But, sir, this doctrine 



RECONSTRUCTION. 267 

is monstrous. It has no foundation in the Con- 
stitution. It subjects all the States to the will 
of Congress ; it places their institutions at the 
feet of Congress. It creates in Congress an ab- 
solute, unqualified despotism. It asserts the 
power of Congress in changing the State gov- 
ernments to be " plenary, supreme, unlimited," 
" subject only to revision by the people of the 
United States." The rights of the people of 
the State are nothing ; their will is nothing. 
Congress first decides ; the people of the whole 
Union revise. My own State of Ohio is liable at 
any moment to be called in question for her 
constitution. She does not permit negroes to 
vote. If this doctrine be true, Congress may de- 
cide that this exclusion is anti-republican, and by 
force of arms abrogate that constitution and set 
up another, permitting negroes to vote. From 
that decision of Congress there is no appeal to 
the people of Ohio, but only to the people of 
New York and Massachusetts and Wisconsin 
at the election of representatives, and, if a 
majority cannot be elected to reverse the de- 
cision, the people of Ohio must submit. Woe 
be to the day when that doctrine shall be estab- 
lished, for from its centralized despotism we 
will appeal to the sword ! 



268 GEORGE H. PENDLETON. 

Sir, the rights of the States were the founda- 
tion corners of the confederation. The Con- 
stitution recognized them, maintained them, 
provided for their perpetuation. Our fathers 
thought them the safeguard of our liberties. 
They have proved so. They have reconciled 
liberty with empire ; they have reconciled the 
freedom of the individual with the increase of 
our magnificent domain. They are the test, the 
touchstone, the security of our liberties. This 
bill, and the avowed doctrine of its supporters, 
sweeps them all instantly away. It substitutes 
despotism for self-government — despotism the 
more severe because vested in a numerous Con- 
gress elected by a people who may not feel the 
exercise of its power. It subverts the govern- 
ment, destroys the confederation, and erects a 
tyranny on the ruins of republican governments. 
It creates unity — it destroys liberty; it main- 
tains integrity of territory, but destroys the 
rights of the citizen. 



JOHN SHERMAN, 

OF OHIO. 
(born 1823.) 



ON PRESIDENT JOHNSON S POLICY ; UNITED STATES 
SENATE, FEBRUARY 23, 1866. 

I WILL ask Senators this plain question, 
whether we have a right now, having failed to 
do our constitutional duty, to arraign Andrew 
Johnson for following out a plan which, in his 
judgment, he deemed the best, and especially 
when that plan was the plan adopted by Mr. 
Lincoln, and which had at least the apparent 
ratification of the people of the United States 
in the election of Lincoln and Johnson. * * * 
In the absence of law, I ask you whether Presi- 
dent Lincoln and President Johnson did not 
do substantially right when they adopted a 
plan of their own and endeavored to carry it 
into execution ? Although we may now find 
fault with the terms and conditions that were 
imposed by them upon the Southern States, yet 
269 



270 JOHN SHERMAN. 

we must remember that the source of all power 
in this country, the people of the United States, 
in the election of these two men substantially 
sanctioned the plan of Mr. Lincoln. Why, sir, 
at the very time that Andrew Johnson was 
nominated for the Vice-Presidency, he was in 
Tennessee as military governor, executing the 
very plan that he subsequently attempted to 
carry out, and he was elected Vice-President of 
the United States when he was in the practical 
execution of that plan. * * * 

I propose now to recall, very briefly, the 
steps adopted by President Johnson in his plan 
of reconstruction. * * * His first act was 
to retain in his confidence and his councils 
every member of the cabinet of Abraham Lin- 
coln ; and, so far as we know, every measure 
adopted by Andrew Johnson has had the ap- 
proval and sanction of that cabinet. * * * 
Not only that, but he adopted the policy of 
Abraham Lincoln in hcEc verba. * * * Not 
only that, but in carrying out his plans of 
reconstruction, he adopted all the main feat- 
ures of the only bill passed by Congress, the 
Wade and Davis bill. * * * Now I ask you 
what were the conditions imposed on these 
people? First, the adoption of the (Xlllth) 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 2J\ 

constitutional amendment. He was not willing 
to leave the matter to their amnesty oath, or 
to the proclamation of President Lincoln, but 
he demanded of them the incorporation in their 
State constitutions of a prohibition of slavery, 
so as to secure beyond peradventure the aboli- 
tion of slavery for ever and ever throughout the 
United States. This he required in every order 
issued to the South, and demanded it as a first 
and preliminary condition to any effort toward 
reconstruction. Next he demanded a repudia- 
tion of the rebel debt, and a guaranty put into 
the constitutions of the respective States that 
they never would, under any circumstances, pay 
any portion of the rebel debt. Next he secured 
the enforcement of the test oath, so that every 
officer in the Southern States, under the act of 
Congress, was compelled to take that oath ; 
or, if he could not find ofiticers there to do it, 
he sent officers from the Northern States to do 
it, so that this law, the most objectionable 
of any to the Southern people, was enforced 
in all instances at the South. * * * Next 
he enforced in every case full and ample pro- 
tection to the freedmen of the Southern 
States. As I said before, no case was ever 
brought to his knowledge, so far as I can 



2/2 JOHN SHERMAN. 

gather, in which he did not do full and substan- 
tial justice. * * * 

The principal objection that has been made 
to his policy is that he did not extend his invi- 
tation to all the loyal men of the Southern 
States, including the colored as well as the 
white people. * * * Now, let us look at that 
question. In every one of the seceded States, 
before the rebellion, the negro was excluded 
from the right of voting by their laws. It is 
true the Senator from Massachusetts would say 
these are all swept away. Admit that ; but in 
a majority of the Northern States to this hour 
there is a denial of the right of suffrage to the 
colored population. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, 
and New York that right is limited, and these 
three States contain one third of the people of 
the United States. In a large majority of the 
States, including the most populous, negro 
suffrage is prohibited. And yet you ask Presi- 
dent Johnson, by a simple mandatory procla- 
mation or military order, to confer the franchise 
on a class of people who are not only prohibited 
from voting in the eleven Southern States, but 
in a majority of the Nortern States, and, in- 
deed, I think, in all the States except six. * * * 
We complain here that the President has not 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S POLICY. 2/3 

exercised his power to extend to freedmen the 
right of suffrage when Congress never has done 
it. We have absolute authority over this Dis- 
trict ; and, until this session, the proposition 
was not seriously mooted to extend the suffrage 
to the colored population. Here, better than 
anywhere else in the Union, they are fitted and 
entitled to suffrage ; and yet we never, in our 
legislative power for this District, where we 
have absolute power, complied with that condi- 
tion which has been asked of the President of 
the United States. * * * So, I think, we have 
never conferred the right to vote upon negroes 
in the Territories. * * * And this is not all ; 
in the only plan Congress has ever proposed 
for the reconstruction of the Southern States, 
the Wade and Davis bill, to which I have re- 
ferred so often. Congress did not and would 
not make negro suffrage a part of their plan. 
The effort was made to do so, and was aban- 
doned. By that bill the suffrage was conferred 
only upon white male loyal citizens. And in 
the plan adopted by the President, he adopted 
in this respect the very same conditions for 
suffrage prescribed by Congress. Now, have 
we, as candid and honorable men, the right to 
complain of the President because he declined 



274 JOHN SHERMAN. 

to extend suffrage to this most ignorant freed 
population, when we have refused or neglected 
to extend it to them, or to the negroes of this 
District, or to the colored men who may go to 
the Territories? No, sir; whatever may be our 
opinion of the theory or right of every man to 
vote — and I do not dispute or contest with 
honorable Senators upon that point — I say, 
with the President, that to ask him to extend 
to four millions of these people the right of 
suffrage, when we have not the courage to 
extend it to those within our control, when our 
States, represented by us here on this floor, 
have refused to do it, is to make of him an un- 
reasonable demand, in which the people of the 
United States will not sustain Congress. 



THADDEUS STEVENS, 

OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

(born 1792, DIED 1868.) 



ON THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTION BILL ; HOUSE OF 
REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 3, 1867. 

Mr. Speaker: 

What are the great questions which now di- 
vide the nation ? In the midst of the political 
Babel which has been produced by the inter- 
mingling of secessionists, rebels, pardoned trai- 
tors, hissing Copperheads, and apostate Repub- 
licans, such a confusion of tongues is heard that 
it is difificult to understand either the questions 
that are asked or the answers that are given. 
Ask what is the " President's policy," and it is 
difificult to define it. Ask what is the " policy 
of Congress," and the answer is not always at 
hand. A few moments may be profitably 
spent in seeking the meaning of each of these 
terms. 

In this country the whole sovereignty rests 
275 



2/6 THADDEUS STEVENS. 

with the people, and is exercised through their 
Representatives in Congress assembled. The 
legislative power is the sole guardian of that 
sovereignty. No other branch of the govern- 
ment, no other department, no other officer of 
the government, possesses one single particle 
of the sovereignty of the nation. No govern- 
ment official, from the President and Chief-Jus- 
tice down, can do any one act which is not pre- 
scribed and directed by the legislative power. 
Suppose the government were now to be organ- 
ized for the first time under the Constitution, 
and the President had been elected, and the 
judiciary appointed ; what could either do until 
Congress passed laws to regulate their proceed- 
ings? What power would the President have 
over any one subject of government until Con- 
gress had legislated on that subject ? * * * 
The President could not even create bureaus or 
departments to facilitate his executive opera- 
tions. He must ask leave of Congress. Since, 
then, the President cannot enact, alter, or 
modify a single law ; cannot even create a petty 
office within his own sphere of operations ; if, 
in short, he is the mere servant of the people, 
who issue their commands to him through Con- 
gress, whence does he derive the constitutional 



Fin ST RECONSTRUCTION BIIL. 277 

power to create new States, to remodel old 
ones, to dictate organic laws, to fix the qualifica- 
tions of voters, to declare that States are re- 
publican and entitled to command Congress, to 
admit their Representatives? To my mind it 
is either the most ignorant and shallow mistake 
of his duties, or the most brazen and impudent 
usurpation of power. It is claimed for him by 
some as commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy. How absurd that a mere executive 
officer should claim creative powers. Though 
commander-in-chief by the Constitution, he 
would have nothing to command, either by land 
or water until Congress raised both army and 
navy. Congress also prescribes the rules and 
regulations to govern the army; even that is 
not left to the Commander-in-chief. 

Though the President is commander-in-chief, 
Congress is his commander ; and, God willing, 
he shall obey. He and his minions shall learn 
that this is not a government of kings and 
satraps, but a government of the people, and 
that Congress is the people. * * * To recon- 
struct the nation, to admit new States, to guar- 
antee republican governments to old States, arc 
all legislative acts. The President claims the 
right to exercise them. Congress denies it, and 



278 TH A DDE us STEVENS. 

asserts the right to belong to the legislative 
branch. They have determined to defend these 
rights against all usurpers. They have deter- 
mined that, while in their keeping, the Consti- 
tution shall not be violated with impunity. 
This I take to be the great question between 
the President and Congress. He claims the 
right to reconstruct by his own power. Congress 
denies him all power in the matter except that 
of advice, and has determined to maintain such 
denial. " My policy" asserts full power in the 
Executive. The policy of Congress forbids him 
to exercise any power therein. 

Beyond this I do not agree that the " policy " 
of the parties is defined. To be sure, many 
subordinate items of the policy of each may be 
easily sketched. The President * * ^ desires 
that the traitors (having sternly executed that 
most important leader. Rickety Wirz, as a high 
example) should be exempt from further fine, 
imprisonment, forfeiture, exile, or capital punish- 
ment, and be declared entitled to all the rights 
of loyal citizens. He desires that the States 
created by him shall be acknowledged as valid 
States, while at the same time he inconsistently 
declares that the old rebel States are in full 
existence, and always have been, and have equal 



FIRST RECONSTRUCTION- BILL. 279 

rights with the loyal States. He opposes the 
amendment to the Constitution which changes 
the basis of representation, and desires the old 
slave States to have the benefit of their increase 
of freemen without increasing the number of 
votes; in short, he desires to make the vote of 
one rebel in South Carolina equal to the votes 
of three freemen in Pennsylvania or New York. 
He is determined to force a solid rebel delega- 
tion into Congress from the South, which, 
together with Northern Copperheads, could at 
once control Congress and elect all future 
Presidents. 

Congress refuses to treat the States created 
by him as of any validity, and denies that the 
old rebel States have any existence which gives 
them any rights under the Constitution. Con- 
gress insists on changing the basis of representa- 
tion so as to put white voters on an equality in 
both sections, and that such change shall pre- 
cede the admission of any State, st * * 
Congress denies that any State lately in rebel- 
lion has any government or constitution known 
to the Constitution of the United States, or 
which can be recognized as a part of the Union. 
How, then, can such a State adopt the (XHIth) 
amendment ? To allow it would be yielding 



28o TH A DDE us STEVENS. 

the whole question, and admitting the un- 
impaired rights of the seceded States. I know 
of no RepubHcan who does not ridicule what 
Mr. Seward thought a cunning movement, in 
counting Virginia and other outlawed States 
among those which had adopted the constitu- 
tional amendment abolishing slavery. 

It is to be regretted that inconsiderate and in- 
cautious Republicans should ever have supposed 
that the slight amendments already proposed to 
the Constitution, even when incorporated into 
that instrument, would satisfy the reforms neces- 
sary for the security of the government. Un- 
less the rebel States, before admission, should 
be made republican in spirit, and placed under 
the guardianship of loyal men, all our blood and 
treasure will have been spent in vain. * * * 
The law of last session with regard to Terri- 
tories settled the principles of such acts. Im- 
partial suffrage, both in electing the delegates 
and in ratifying their proceedings, is now the 
fixed rule. There is more reason why colored 
voters should be admitted in the rebel States 
than in the Territories. In the States they 
form the great mass of the loyal men. Possibly, 
with their aid, loyal governments may be estab- 
lished in most of those States, Without it all 



FIRST RECONSTRUCTION BILL. 28 1 

are sure to be ruled by traitors ; and loyal 
men, black or white, will be oppressed, exiled, 
or murdered. 

There are several good reasons for the passage 
of this bill. In the first place, it is just. I am 
now confining my argument to negro suffrage in 
the rebel States. Have not loyal blacks quite 
as good a right to choose rulers and make laws 
as rebel whites? In the second place, it is 
a necessity in order to protect the loyal white 
men in the seceded States. With them the 
blacks would act in a body ; and it is believed 
then, in each of said States, except one, the 
two united would form a majority, control 
the States, and protect themselves. Now they 
are the victims of daily murder. They must 
suffer constant persecution or be exiled. 

Another good reason is that it would insure 
the ascendency of the Union party. " Do you 
avow the party purpose ? " exclaims some horror- 
stricken demagogue. I do. For I believe, on 
my conscience, that on the continued ascendency 
of that party depends the safety of this great 
nation. If impartial suffrage is excluded in the 
rebel States, then every one of them is sure 
to send a solid rebel representation to Congress, 
and cast a solid rebel electoral vote. They, 



282 THADDEUS STEVENS. 

with their kindred Copperheads of the North, 
would always elect the President and control 
Congress. While slavery sat upon her defiant 
throne, and insulted and intimidated the trem- 
bling North, the South frequently divided on 
questions of policy between Whigs and Demo- 
crats, and gave victory alternately to the sec- 
tions. Now, you must divide them between 
loyalists, without regard to color, and disloyal- 
ists, or you will be the perpetual vassals of 
the free-trade, irritated, revengeful South. For 
these, among other reasons, I am for negro suf- 
frage in every rebel State. If it be just, it 
should not be denied ; if it be necessary, it should 
be adopted ; if it be a punishment to traitors, 
they deserve it. 



JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 

-OF OHIO. 

(born 183I, DIED t88l.) 



ON THE REACTION AGAINST RECONSTRUCTION ; 
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 29, 1879. 

Mr. Chairman : 

I have no hope of being able to convey to 
the members of this House my own conviction 
of the very great gravity and solemnity of the 
crisis which this decision of the Chair and of 
the Committee of the Whole has brought upon 
this country. I wish I could be proved a false 
prophet in reference to the result of this action. 
I wish I could be overwhelmed with the proof 
that I am utterly mistaken in my views. But 
no view I have ever taken has entered more 
deeply and more seriously into my convictions 
than this : that this House has resolved to-day 
to enter upon a revolution against the Consti- 
tution and Government of the United States. 
I do not know that the intention exists in the 
minds of half the Representatives who occupy 
283 



284 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

the Other side of this Hall. I hope it does not. 
I am ready to believe it does not exist to any 
large extent. But I mean to say the conse- 
quences of the programme just adopted, if per- 
sisted in, is nothing less than the total subver- 
sion of this government. 

Let me in the outset state, as carefully as I 
may, the precise situation. At the last session 
all our ordinary legislative work was done, in 
accordance with the usages of the House and 
the Senate, except as to two bills. Two of the 
twelve great appropriation bills for the support 
of the government were agreed to in both 
Houses as to every matter of detail concerning 
the appropriations proper. We were assured 
by the Committees of Conference in both bodies 
that there would be no difficulty in adjusting 
all differences in reference to the amount of 
money to be appropriated and the objects of its 
appropriation. But the House of Representa- 
tives proposed three measures of distinctly 
independent legislation ; one upon the army 
appropriation bill, and two upon the legislative 
appropriation bill. The three grouped together 
are briefly these : first, the substantial modifica- 
tion of certain sections of the law relating to 
the use of the army ; second, the repeal of the 




-' I Pease -Eii^rave r N i 



RECONSTRUCTION. 285 

jurors' test oath ; and third, the repeal of the 
laws regulating elections of members of Con- 
gress. 

These three propositions of legislation were 
insisted upon by the House, but the Senate re- 
fused to adopt them. So far it was an ordinary- 
proceeding, one which occurs frequently in all 
legislative bodies. The Senate said to us 
through their conferees : " We are ready to 
pass the appropriation bills, but we are un- 
willing to pass as riders the three legislative 
measures you ask us to pass." Thereupon the 
House said, through its Conference Committee 
— and, in order that I may do exact justice, I 
read from the speech of the distinguished 
Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] on the re- 
port of the Conference Committee : 

The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem 
determined that unless those rights were secured to the 
people [alluding to the three points I have named] in the bill 
sent to the Senate, they would refuse, under their constitu- 
tional right, to make appropriations to carry on the govern- 
ment, if the dominant majority in the Senate insisted upon 
the maintenance of these laws and refused to consent to their 
repeal. 

Then, after stating that if the position they 
had taken compelled an extra session, and that 
the new Congress would offer the repealing 



286 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

bills separately, and forecasting what would hap- 
pen when the new House should be under no 
necessity of coercing the Senate, he declared 
that: 

If, however, the President of the United States, in the ex- 
ercise of the power vested in him, should see fit to veto the bills 
thus presented to him, * * * then I have no doubt those 
same amendments will be again made part of the appropriation 
bills, and it will be for the President to determine whether he 
will block the wheels of government and refuse to accept 
necessary appropriations rather than allow the Representatives 
of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as sub- 
versive of their rights and privileges. * * * "Whether that 
course is right or wrong it will be adopted, and I have no doubt 
adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation 
bills. 

That was the proposition made by the Democ- 
racy in Congress at the close of the Congress 
now dead. 

Another distinguished Senator (Mr. Thur- 
man) — and I may properly refer to Senators of 
a Congress not now in existence, — reviewing the 
situation, declared in still more succinct terms : 

We claim the right, which the House of Commons in Eng- 
land established after two centuries of contest, to say that we 
will not grant the money of the people unless there is a redress 
of grievances. 

These propositions were repeated with vari- 
ious degrees of vehemence by the majority in 
the House. 



RE CONS TR UC TION. 287 

The majority in the Senate and the minority 
on this floor expressed the deepest anxiety to 
avoid an extra session and to avert the catas- 
trophe thus threatened — the stoppage of the 
government. They pointed out the danger to 
the country and its business interests of an 
extra session of Congress, and expressed their 
willingness to consent to any compromise con- 
sistent with their views of duty which should 
be offered — not in the way of coercion, but in 
the way of fair adjustment, — and asked to be 
met in a spirit of just accommodation on the 
other side. Unfortunately no spirit of adjust- 
ment was manifested in reply to their advances. 
And now the new Congress is assembled ; and 
after ten days of caucus deliberation, the House 
of- Representatives has resolved substantially to 
reaffirm the positions of its predecessors, except 
that the suggestion of Senator Beck to offer 
the independent legislation in a separate bill 
has been abandoned. By a construction of the 
rules of the House, far more violent than any 
heretofore given, a part of this independent 
legislation is placed on the pending bill for the 
support of the army ; and this House has de- 
termined to begin its career by the extremest 
form of coercive legislation. 



288 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

In my remarks to-day I shall confine myself 
almost exclusively to the one phase of the con- 
troversy presented in this bill. 

Mr. Chairman, viewed from the standpoint 
of a foreigner, our government may be said to 
be the feeblest on earth. From our standpoint, 
and with our experience, it is the mightiest. 
But why would a foreigner call it the feeblest ? 
He can point out a half dozen ways in which it 
can be destroyed without violence. Of course, 
all governments may be overturned by the 
sword ; but there are several ways in which our 
government may be annihilated without the 
firing of a gun. 

For example, if the people of the United 
States should say we will elect no Representa- 
tives to the House of Representatives. Of 
course, this is a violent supposition ; but sup- 
pose that they do not, is there any remedy? 
Does our Constitution provide any remedy 
whatever ? In two years there would be no 
House of Representatives; of course no support 
of the government, and no government. Sup- 
pose, again, the States should say, through 
their Legislatures, we will elect no Sena- 
tors. Such abstention alone would absolutely 
destroy this government ; and our system pro- 



RECONSTRUCTION. 289 

vides no process of compulsion to prevent it. 
Again, suppose the two Houses were assem- 
bled in their usual order, and a majority of one 
in this body or in the Senate should firmly 
band themselves together and say, we will vote 
to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting 
arrives, and continue so to vote at every session 
during our two years of existence ; the govern- 
ment would perish, and there is no provision of 
the Constitution to prevent it. Or again, if a 
majority of one of either body should declare 
that they would vote down, and did vote down, 
every bill to support the government by appro- 
priations, can you find in the whole range of 
our judicial or our executive authority any rem- 
edy whatever? A Senator or a member of this 
House is free, and may vote "no" on every 
proposition. Nothing but his oath and his 
honor restrains him. Not so with executive 
and judicial ofificers. They have no power to 
destroy this government. Let them travel an 
inch beyond the line of the law, and they fall 
within the power of impeachment. But, against 
the people who create Representatives ; against 
the Legislatures who create Senators; against 
Senators and Representatives in these Halls, 
there is no power of impeachment ; there is no 



290 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

remedy, if, by abstention or by adverse votes, 
they refuse to support the government. 

At a first view, it would seem strange that a 
body of men so wise as our fathers were should 
have left a whole side of their fabric open to 
these deadly assaults ; but on a closer view of 
the case their wisdom will appear. What was 
their reliance? This: the sovereign of this na- 
tion, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed 
sovereign, in whom resides " the State's collected 
will," and to whom we all owe allegiance, is the 
people themselves. Inspired by a love of coun- 
try and a deep sense of obligation to perform 
every public duty ; being themselves the crea- 
tors of all the agencies and forces to execute 
their own will, and choosing from themselves 
their Representatives to express that will in the 
forms of law, it would have been like a sugges- 
tion of suicide to assume that any of these 
great voluntary powers would be turned against 
the life of the government. Public opinion — 
that great ocean of thought from whose level 
all heights and all depths are measured — was 
trusted as a power amply able, and always will- 
ing, to guard all the approaches on that side of 
the Constitution from any assault on the life of 
the nation. 



RECONSTRUCTION. 29 1 

Up to this hour our sovereign has never 
failed us. There has never been such a re- 
fusal to exercise those primary functions of 
sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple 
the government ; nor have the majority of the 
Representatives of that sovereign in either 
House of Congress ever before announced their 
purpose to use their voluntary powers for its 
destruction. And now, for the first time in 
our history, and I will add for the first time for 
at least two centuries in the history of any 
English-speaking nation, it is proposed and in- 
sisted upon that these voluntary powers shall 
be used for the destruction of the government. 
I want it distinctly understood that the propo- 
sition which I read at the beginning of my re- 
marks, and which is the programme announced 
to the American people to-day, is this : that if 
this House cannot have its own way in certain 
matters, not connected with appropriations, it 
will so use, or refrain from using, its voluntary 
powers as to destroy the government. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the 
other side that when a demand for the redress 
of grievances is made, the authority that runs 
the risk of stopping and destroying the govern- 
ment is the one that resists the redress. Not 



292 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

SO. If gentlemen will do me the honor to 
follow my thought for a moment more I trust 
I will make this denial good. 

Our theory of law is free consent. That is 
the granite foundation of our whole super- 
structure. Nothing in this republic can be law 
without consent — the free consent of the 
House ; the free consent of the Senate ; the 
free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse 
it, the free consent of two thirds of these 
bodies. Will any man deny that? Will any 
man challenge a line of the statement that free 
consent is the foundation rock of all our in- 
stitutions ? And yet the programme announced 
two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused 
to consent to the demand of the House the 
government should stop. And the proposition 
was then, and the programme is now, that, 
although there is not a Senate to be coerced, 
there is still a third independent branch in the 
legislative power of the government whose con- 
sent is to be coerced at the peril of the de- 
struction of this government ; that is, if the 
President, in the discharge of his duty, shall 
exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse 
his consent to this proposed legislation, the 
Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to 



RECONSTRUCTION. 293 

destroy the government. This is the proposi- 
tion which we confront ; and we denounce it as 
revolution. 

It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what 
the issue is. If it were the simplest and most 
inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you 
demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall 
be adopted against the free consent prescribed 
in the Constitution, every fair-minded man in 
America is bound to resist you as much as 
though his own life depended upon his re- 
sistance. 

Let it be understood that I am not arguing 
the merits of any one of the three amendments. 
I am discussing the proposed method of legisla- 
tion ; and I declare that it is against the Con- 
stitution of our country. It is revolutionary to 
the core, and it is destructive of the funda- 
mental element of American liberty, the free 
consent of all the powers that unite to make 
laws. 

In opening this debate I challenge all comers 
to show a single instance in our history where 
this consent has been coerced. This is the 
great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all 
others into insignificance. * * * 

But I am compelled by the necessities of the 



294 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

case to refer to a chapter of our recent history. 
The last act of Democratic domination in this 
Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and 
dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic 
party said to the Republicans : '' If you elect the 
man of your choice as President of the United 
States we will shoot your government to 
death " ; and the people of this country, refus- 
ing to be coerced by threats of violence, voted 
as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham 
Lincoln as President of the United States. 

Then your leaders, though holding a majority 
in the other branch of Congress, were heroic 
enough to withdraw from their seats and fling 
down the gage of mortal combat. We called 
it rebellion ; but we recognized it as courageous 
and manly to avow your purpose, take all the 
risks, and fight it out in the open field. Not- 
withstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, 
the government was saved. Year by year 
since the war ended those who resisted you 
have come to believe that you have fully re- 
nounced your purpose to destroy and are willing 
to maintain the government. In that belief 
you have been permitted to return to power in 
the two Houses. 

To-day, after eighteen years of defeat, the 



RECONSTRUCTION. 295 

book of your domination is again opened, and 
your first act awakens every unhappy memory 
and threatens to destroy the confidence which 
your professions of patriotism inspired. You 
turned down a leaf of history that recorded your 
last act of power in 1861, and you have now 
signalized your return to power by beginning a 
second chapter at the same page ; not this time 
by an heroic act that declares war on the battle- 
field, but you say if all the legislative powers of 
the government do not consent to let you tear 
certain laws out of the statute-book you will 
not shoot our government to death as you 
tried to do in the first chapter, but you declare 
that if we do not consent against our will, if 
you cannot coerce an independent branch of 
this government, against its will, to allow you 
to tear from the statute-books some laws put 
there by the will of the people, you will starve 
the government to death. 

Between death on the field and death by 
starvation, I do not know that the American 
people will see any great difference. The end, 
if successfully reached, would be death in either 
case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to 
kill this government ; you have it in your 
power, by withholding these two bills, to smite 



296 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

the nerve-centres of our Constitution -with the 
paralysis of death, and you have declared your 
purpose to do this, if you cannot break down 
that fundamental element of free consent which 
up to this hour has always ruled in the legisla- 
tion of this government. * * * 

Gentlemen, we have calmly surveyed this 
new field of conflict ; we have tried to count 
the cost of the struggle, as we did that of 1861 
before we took up your gage of battle. Though 
no human foresight could forecast the awful 
loss of blood and treasure, yet in the name of 
liberty and union we accepted the issue and 
fought it out to the end. We made the appeal 
to our august sovereign, to the omnipotent 
public opinion of America, to determine 
whether the Union should perish at your 
hands. You know the result. And now law- 
fully, in the exercise of our right as Representa- 
tives, we take up the gage you have this day 
thrown down, and appeal again to our common 
sovereign to determine whether you shall be 
permitted to destroy the principle of free con- 
sent in legislation under the threat of starving 
the government to death. 

We are ready to pass these bills for the sup- 
port of the Government at any hour when you 



reconstruction: 297 

will offer them in the ordinary way, by the 
methods prescribed in the Constitution. If you 
offer those propositions of legislation as sep- 
arate measures we will meet you in the fraternal 
spirit of fair debate and will discuss their 
merits. Some of your measures many of us 
will vote for in separate bills. But you shall 
not coerce any independent branch of this 
government, even by the threat of starvation, 
to consent to surrender its voluntary powers 
until the question has been appealed to the 
sovereign and decided in your favor. On this 
ground we plant ourselves, and here will stand 
to the end. * * * 



JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN, 

OF KENTUCKY. 
(born 1838.) 



REPLY TO MR. GARFIELD ; HOUSE OF REPRESENTA- 
TIVES, APRIL 3, 1879. 

Mr. Chairman : 

I do not intend, sir, to be personal in any 
thing that I may say. There has come from 
different members of the other side of the 
House during this debate that which, in my 
judgment, requires and merits notice, and I shall 
go back, before I shall have finished, several 
days to reply as best I may to the points that 
have been made by the distinguished gentleman 
from Ohio (Mr. Garfield). * ^ * 

It is charged, sir, not that the amendment 
under consideration involves of itself an uncon- 
stitutional piece of legislation, but it is urged 
by various distinguished members on this floor 
that it is revolutionary in its character ; that it 
has no proper place on an appropriation bill; 
298 



REPLY TO MR. GARFIELD. 299 

that it is out of line, and deserves the condem- 
nation of the House because it is an exotic in 
this connection and should have been consid- 
ered as an independent bill. It is charged, 
further, that the tendency and operation of it 
will be to restrict the power of the Presidency 
as Comander-in-Chief of the Army of the United 
States. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, he is but a poor student 
of this country's history who is not able to sat- 
isfy himself that from the very formation of the 
Federal Constitution down to the present time 
it has ever been held, and that by the highest 
authorities of the land, and never successfully 
denied, that it was a power not only of the 
American Congress, but a power of this House, 
to control the employment of the army by a 
withholding of supplies. 

The debates upon the formation of the Fed- 
eral Constitution which lie before me show that 
the brightest intellects assembled in that con- 
vention asserted this doctrine in its broadest 
term, and no man dared gainsay it. It is one of 
those features of English liberty that have come 
down to us by adoption. 

It was so stated in the debates upon the for- 
mation of this instrument, as given to us, that 



300 JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN. 

it is ever and always in the power of the House 
of Representatives, by copying the example of 
the House of Commons of England in with- 
holding supplies, to control absolutely the em- 
ployment and conduct of the army. You may 
follow that theory down at short intervals, and 
in 1 8 19, when an army appropriation bill was 
considered and passed in this Chamber, and it 
was proposed to restrict the power of the Presi- 
dent by specifying the purpose to which the 
appropriations should be applied, the very same 
argument was made against it then that our 
friends on the other side hurl against us now. 

It was upon that occasion that Mr. Mercer, 
one of the brightest among the law-makers of 
the government of his day, asserted upon this 
floor, without encountering contradiction, that 
it was in the power of the House of Representa- 
tives to withhold supplies altogether for the 
maintenance of the army, if, indeed, that should 
become necessary to control its operation. It 
was then that one whose patriotism has never 
been questioned, though it has survived through 
the greater portion of a fading century only to 
grow brighter as the ages go by, — it was then 
that not only Kentucky's but America's great 
commoner, Mr. Clay, declared in his burning 



REPLY TO MR. GARFIELD. 30 1 

words of eloquence, uttered where we now sit, 
that he was ready to make the issue with the 
Executive and offer him a bill with the objec- 
tionable features incorporated in it, and to say 
to the Executive : " Sign or refuse to sign it ; 
but if you do refuse to sign it, declaring that 
we have not the power to pass it, then my 
answer to you shall be, neither has the Execu- 
tive the power that you arrogate to yourself." 
And you may come down from then till now, 
and never in the history of this government has 
it been denied that the Constitution itself, which 
gives to Congress the right to pass these money 
bills to provide means for the support and main- 
tenance of a military establishment, carries 
with it the resultant right on the part of Con- 
gress to withhold these appropriations when, 
in its judgment, it is necessary to prevent 
abuses in the employment of the military. 

In the very nature of things this proposed 
amendment of the law cannot be revolutionary. 
It is a repealing statute; its only purpose and 
object is to repeal an existing law. I will not 
pause now to tell how or under what circum- 
stances it was passed ; I will not now pause to 
delineate the motives which, in a great meas- 
ure, because of the prevalence of natural pas- 



302 JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN. 

sions, inspired, if they did not excuse, the pas- 
sage of this law. But in the very nature of 
things this amendment cannot be revolutionary. 
Negative legislation is never revolutionary. 
This is not aflfirmative legislation, twist the 
issue as the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Robeson) may seek to do. Buckle, the most 
philosophic of all historians, either ancient or 
modern, has told us that the statesman and the 
law-maker seldom, if ever, render a benefit to 
mankind by the enactment of affirmative laws ; 
that it is rather by the repealing of obnoxious 
and vicious enactments that they entitle them- 
selves to the gratitude of humanity. * * * 

But it is said that it is not in its proper place 
when ingrafted upon an appropriation bill. 

Is there a gentleman in this Chamber who 
will dare deny or take issue upon the assertion 
— and I make it measuring the full import of 
my words after a careful examination of the 
statutes — that more than one third of the per- 
manent legislation affecting or relating to the 
army of this government, as it stands upon the 
statute-books of your country to-day, has been 
put there as riders upon army appropriation 
bills ? 

I do not care to trench upon the patience of 



REPL V TO MR. GARFIELD. 303 

this committee by any elaborate review of the 
countless instances which that side of the House 
has furnished us in the shape of precedents 
for the action that we take. Sir, if lectures 
upon revolution are to be read to us, let them 
come from some quarter and from some 
member who is not himself convicted on the 
record. * * * 

The gentleman from Ohio, in that effective 
and able speech to which he treated this House 
a few days ago, used the following language, 
which I read from the Record : 

In opening this debate, I challenge all comers to show a 
single instance in our history where this consent has been 
coerced. 

What consent ? The consent of the Executive by extrane- 
ous matter injected into appropriation bills. 

This is the great, the paramount issue, which 
dwarfs all others into insignificance. 

I accept the gage of battle that the gentle- 
man throws down. I read from the records and 
show him the instance he seeks. I find that on 
the second day of March, 1867, a thing occurred 
in this House of which the gentleman should 
have been cognizant, for he was then as now 
an honored member on this floor. I find 
the following inessage was sent by the Presi- 



304 JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN. 

dent of the United States to the House of 
Representatives : 

To the Hottse of Representatives : 

The act entitled " An act making appropriations for the 
support of the army — 

Ah, by a singular coincidence that too was an 
army bill, just as this is — 

The act entitled " An act making appropriations for the 
support of the army for the year ending June 30, 1868, and 
for other purposes," contains provisions to which I must call 
attention. Those provisions are contained in the second sec- 
tion, which in certain cases virtually deprives the President of 
his constitutional functions as Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army, and in the sixth section, which denies to ten States of 
this Union their constitutional right to protect themselves in 
any emergency by means of their own militia. These pro- 
visions are out of place in an appropriation act. — 

Did the gentleman from Ohio borrow his re- 
cently used protest from this official protest of 
the Executive of this country ? — 

These provisions are out of place in an appropriation act. I 
am compelled to defeat these necessary appropriations if I 
withhold my signature to the act. Pressed by these consider- 
ations — 

I grant you he does not say " coerced " — 

Pressed by these considerations, I feel constrained to return 
the bill with my signature, but to accompany it with my pro- 
test against the sections which I have indicated. 

Andrew Johnson. 
March 2, 1867, 



REPLY TO MR. GARFIELD. 305 

Is there no coercion there ? Why, sir, the 
record is full. In an act making appropriations 
for the sundry civil expenses of this govern- 
ment for the year ending June 30, 1865, it was 
provided that in the courts of the United States 
there should be no exclusion of any witness on 
account of color, or in any other civil action 
because he is a party interested in the issue to 
be tried. Is not that extraneous matter ? Yet 
upon this bill the record shows that the gentle- 
man from Ohio is found voting in the list of 
ayes. * * * 

But, sir, I am not through with the speech 
which the gentleman has made. He tells us : 

The proposition now is, that after fourteen years have 
passed, and not one petition from one American citizen has 
come to us asking that this law be repealed ; while not one 
memorial has found its way to our desks complaining of the 
law, so far as I have heard, the Democratic House of Repre- 
sentatives now holds that if they are not permitted to force 
upon another House and upon the Executive against their 
consent the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal 
shall be considered a sufficient ground for starving this gov- 
ernment to death. That is the proposition which we denounce 
as revolution. 

And that was received with applause on the 
Republican side. Does the gentleman from 
Ohio mean to stand upon that declaration ? By 



306 JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN. 

that significant nod he says that he does. Does 
he not know that the Congress just expired 
bore upon its files petition, memorial after 
memorial, in contested election-cases, sent 
by the House to its committee, protesting 
against the presence of the military at the 
polls, and denouncing the usurpation, de- 
manding its repeal, in order that a free ballot 
might be had. Does the gentleman fail to re- 
member that the State of Louisiana, a sover- 
eign State of this confederacy once more, thank 
God, sent her memorial to these Halls, in which 
in thunder tones she uttered her anathemas 
against the very practice which this amendment 
seeks to correct ? * * * 

There is but one issue here, and I insist that 
neither this House nor the people of this coun- 
try shall be allowed to wander from it. It is 
but this, and nothing more : whether the mili- 
tary power shall be allowed at your polls ; 
whether the elections shall be guarded by the 
mailed hand of military power; whether the 
ballot-box, that last and safest shield of the 
freeman's liberties, shall be turned over to the 
tender mercies of the armies of your land. Or 
to state it yet more tersely and probably more 
fairly, it is simply whether the spirit and the 



REPL Y TO MR. GARFIELD. 307 

genius of this government shall be reversed, 
and whether the civil shall be made subordinate 
to the military power. * * * 

It is this question, and it is none other, that 
I insist shall be kept before this House. We 
are declaring that the ballot shall be free. We 
are denying that it is either constitutional, legal, 
just, fair, or decent, to subject the sovereign to 
the surveillance of the soldier. 

Now, upon that issue the gentleman from 
Ohio and his associates tell us that they stand 
committed. I answer so do we. 

We are willing to discuss it, and for my part 
I shall oppose any limitation being put upon 
this debate. If we cannot stand upon an issue 
so broad, so constitutional, so catholic, so fair, 
so free as this, then tell me in Heaven's name 
where are there battlements strong enough for 
us to get behind ? Let it go to the country 
that one party asserts that the manacles shall 
fall from the limbs of the citizen, and that the 
army shall not hold its mailed hand at the 
throat of the sovereign,* and that the other 
party refuses to release the throttling grasp, 
and declares that it will block the wheels of 
government and bring it to starvation. 

I am willing, and those with whom I stand 



308 JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN. 

are willing, to accept this issue, and we go fur- 
ther, we tender it. We are the ones to make 
the issue and we are ready for you to accept it. 
Planting ourselves upon this broad ground, we 
welcome controversy. We seek no quarrel with 
you, but for the first time in eighteen years 
past the Democracy is back in power in both 
branches of this Legislature, and she proposes 
to signalize her return to power, she proposes 
to celebrate her recovery of her long-lost heri- 
tage, by tearing off these degrading badges of 
servitude and destroying the machinery of a 
corrupt and partisan legislation. 

We do not intend to stop until we have 
stricken the last vestige of your war measures 
from the statute-book, which, like these, were 
born of the passions incident to civil strife, and 
looked to the abridgment of the liberty of the 
citizen. 

We demand an untrammelled election ; no 
supervising of the ballot by the army. Free, 
absolutely free right to the citizen in the de- 
posit of his ballot as a condition-precedent to 
the passage of your bills. * * * 

Standing upon such grounds, we intend to 
deny to the President of this republic the right 
to exercise such constitutional power. We do 



RE PL Y TO MR. GARFIELD. 309 

not mean to pitch this contest upon ground of 
objection to him who happens, if not by the 
grace of God yet by the run of luck, to be admin- 
istering that office. I tell you here that if from 
that canvas [pointing to the picture of Washing- 
ton] the first President of this repubhc should 
step down and resume those powers that the 
grateful people of an infant republic conferred on 
him as their first Chief Magistrate, — if he were 
here, fired by that patriotic ardor that moved 
him in the earlier and better days of this re- 
public, to him we would never consent to yield 
such dangerous and unwarranted powers, to 
rest the liberties of tlie citizen upon any one 
man's discretion, nor would he receive it. 

It was not for the earlier but for the later Ex- 
ecutives of this government to grasp and seek 
to retain such questionable prerogatives. You 
cannot have it. The issue is made — it is made 
upon principle, not upon policy. It cannot be 
abandoned ; it will not be surrendered. Stand- 
ing upon such ground, clothed in such a pano- 
ply, resting this case upon the broadest princi- 
ples of eternal justice, we are content to appeal 
to the people in this land. There is no tribunal 
to which we are not willing to carry this case of 
contest ; and we are willing to allow Him who 



310 JOSEPH C. S. BLACKBURN. 

rules the destinies of men to judge between 
us and give the victory to the right. 

I do not mean to issue a threat. Unlike the 
gentleman from Ohio I disclaim any authority 
to threaten. But I do mean to say that it is my 
deliberate conviction that there is not to be 
found in this majority a single man who will 
ever consent to abandon one jot or tittle of the 
faith that is in him. He cannot surrender if he 
would. I beg you to believe he will not be 
coerced by threats nor intimidated by parade 
of power. He must stand upon his conviction, 
and there we will all stand. He who dallies is 
a dastard, and he who doubts is damned. 



ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD, 

OF GEORGIA. 
(born 1839.) 



THANKSGIVING SERMON, THE NEW SOUTH ; EMORY 
COLLEGE, OXFORD, GA., NOVEMBER 25, 1880. 

I MAY possibly, but I trust not, speak of 
some things that you may not relish, and ad- 
vance some views that you may not approve. 
If so, I only ask a fair and reasonable reflection 
upon them. If you should condemn them, I 
have left me at least the satisfaction of being 
qmte sure that I am right, and that, if you live 
long enough, you will agree with me. And 
first, we of the South have great reason to be 
thankful to God that we are in all respects so 
well off ; and that, too, so soon after so great a 
war, so complete an overturning of our institu- 
tions, so entire an overthrow of our industries, 
so absolute a defeat of our most cherished plans. 
Recall briefly the last twenty years. Think of 
what we were in i860 and in 1865. Then look 
311 



312 ATTIC us G. HAYGOOD. 

about you and see what we are in i88o. What 
was thought by our people after Appomattox 
and April, 1865, as to the prospect before us? 
Some of you can recall the forebodings of that 
time as to the return of business prosperity, 
the restoration and preservation of civil and 
social order among ourselves, and the restora- 
tion of our relations to the Union. You know 
how many of our best and bravest left our 
section forever in sheer despair. Behold, now, 
what wonders have been wrought in fifteen 
years. 

I. — Considering where and what we were 
fifteen years ago, considering the financial 
convulsions and panics that have swept over 
our country during that time, I might say 
that have disturbed the civilized world, our in- 
dustrial and financial condition is marvellously 
good. It is not true, as certain croakers and 
" Bourbons," floated from their moorings by 
the rising tide of new and better ideas, are so 
fond of saying, that the South is getting poorer 
every day. These croakings are not only un- 
seemly, they are false in their statements, as 
they are ungrateful in their sentiment. A 
right study of our tax returns will show that 
there is life and progress in the South. But 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 313 

statistical tables are not the only witnesses in 
such a case. Let people use their own eyes. 
Here is this one fact — the cotton crop, as an 
exponent of the power of industrial system. 
In 1879 we n^ade nearly five million bales; in 
1880 it is believed that we will make nearly six 
million bales. We never made so much under 
the old system. It is nonsense to talk of a 
country as ruined that can do such things. 
There are more people at work in the South 
to-day than were ever at work before ; and they 
are raising not only more cotton, but more of 
every thing else. And no wonder, for the farm- 
ing of to-day is better than the farming of the 
old days, and in two grand particulars : first, 
better culture ; and second, the ever-increasing 
tendency to break up the great plantations into 
small farms. Our present system is more than 
restoring what the old system destroyed. 

The great body of our people not only make 
more than they did before the war, but they 
make a better use of it — they get unspeakably 
more comfort out of it. I am willing to make 
the comparison on any line of things that you 
may suggest, for I know both periods. Re- 
member that I am speaking of the great mass 
of the people, and not of the few great slave- 



314 ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD. 

holders, some of whom lived like princes, not 
forgetting, meantime, that the majority of our 
people never owned slaves at all. 

For one illustration, take, if you please, the 
home life of our people. There is ten times 
the comfort there was twenty years ago. 
Travel through your own county — and it is 
rather below than above the average — by any 
public or private road. Compare the old and 
the new houses. The houses built recently are 
better every way than those built before the 
war. I do not speak of an occasional mansion, 
that in the old times lifted itself proudly among 
a score of cabins, but of the thousands of de- 
cent farm-houses, comely cottages, that have 
been built in the last ten years. I know scores 
whose new barns are better than their old resi- 
dences. Our people have better furniture. 
Good mattresses have largely driven out the old 
time feathers. Cook stoves, sewing-machines, 
with all such comforts and conveniences, may 
be seen in a dozen homes to-day where you 
could hardly have found them in one in i860. 
Lamps that make reading agreeable have 
driven out tallow dips, by whose glimmering 
no eyes could long read and continue to see. 
Better taste asserts itself ; the new houses are 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 315 

painted ; they have not only glass, but blinds. 
There is more comfort inside. There are luxu- 
ries where once there were not conveniences. 
Carpets are getting to be common among the 
middle classes. There are parlor organs, 
pianos, and pictures, where we never saw them 
before. And so on, to the end of a long 
chapter. 

Test the question of our better condition by 
the receipts of benevolent institutions, the sup- 
port of the ministry, the building improvement, 
and furnishing of churches, and we have the 
same answer. Our people are better off now 
than in i860. In reply to all this, some will 
say: "But it costs more to live than in i860." 
I answer : " True enough ; but there is more to 
live for." 

II. — The social and civil order existing in the 
Southern States is itself wonderful, and an oc- 
casion for profound gratitude. For any wrongs 
that have been done in our section, for any acts 
of violence on any pretext, for any disobe- 
dience to law, I have not one word of defence. 
Admitting, for argument's sake, all that the 
bitterest cf our censors have ever said on these 
subjects, I still say that, considering what were 
the conditions of life in the Southern States 



3l6 AT TIC us G. HAYGOOD. 

after April, 1865, the civil and social order that 
exists in the South is wonderful. Our critics 
and censors forget, we must believe, the his- 
tory of other countries. They have never com- 
prehended the problem we had given us to 
work out after the surrender ; only those who 
have lived through that period can ever under- 
stand it. Why, has not this whole Southern 
country repeated the scenes of Hayti and San 
Domingo? Not the repressive power of a 
strong government only ; not the fear of the 
stronger race only ; not that suggestions have 
been lacking from fierce and narrow fanatics ; 
but chiefly in this — the conservative power of 
the Protestant religion, which had taken such 
deep root in the hearts and lives of our people. 
The controlling sentiment of the Southern 
people, in city and hamlet, in camp and field, 
among the white and black, has been religious. 
III. — The restoration of our relations to the 
general government should excite our grati- 
tude. Possibly some do not go with me here. 
Then I must go without them, but I shall not 
lack for company, and as the years pass it will 
be an ever-increasing throng. We must distin- 
guish between a party we have for the most 
part antagonized, and the government it has so 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 317 

long controlled. Whatever may be the faults 
of the party in power, or of the party out of 
power, this is, nevertheless, so far as I know, 
altogether the most satisfactory and desirable 
government in the world, and I am thankful to 
God, the disposer of the affairs of nations and 
of men, that our States are again in relations 
with the general government. 

Should we be surprised or discouraged be- 
cause our section does not control the govern- 
ment ? History, if not reason, should teach us 
better. Is there a parallel to our history since 
i860 — war bitter, continued, and destructive, 
defeat utter and overwhelming, and all followed 
so soon by so great political influence and 
consideration as we now enjoy ? When did a 
defeated and conquered minority ever before in 
the short space of fifteen years regain such 
power and influence in any age or nation ? And 
this is the more wonderful when we consider 
the immeasurable capacity for blundering which 
the leaders of the dominant party in our section 
have manifested during those years of political 
conflict. And it is the more wonderful still 
when we consider how ready the dominant 
party of the other section has been to receive, 
as the expression of the fixed though secret sen- 



3l8 ATTIC us G. HAYGOOD. 

timent of the mass of the Southern people, the 
wild utterances of a few extreme impracticables, 
who have never forgotten and have never 
learned. I tell you to-day that the sober- 
minded people who had read history did not in 
1865 expect that our relations with the general 
government would be by 1880 as good as they 
are. But they would have been better than 
they are if the real sentiment of the masses on 
both sides could have gotten itself fairly ex- 
pressed ; for these masses wish to be friends, 
and before very long they will sweep from their 
way those who seek to hinder them. My con- 
gregation, looked at on all sides and measured 
by any tests, it is one of the wonders of history 
that our people have, in so short a time — fifteen 
years is a very short time in the history of a na- 
tion, — sd far overcome the evil effects of one of 
the most bloody and desolating and exasper- 
ating wars ever waged in this world. And the 
facts speak worlds for our Constitution, for our 
form of government, and above all for our 
■Protestant religion — a religion which will yet 
show itself to be the best healer of national 
wounds and the best reconciler of estranged 
brethren. 

IV. — There is one great historic fact which 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 



319 



should, in my sober judgment, above all other 
things, excite everywhere in the South pro- 
found gratitude to Almighty God. I mean the 
abolition of African slavery. 

If I speak only for myself, and I am persuad- 
ed that I do not, then be it so. But I, for one 
thank God that there is no longer slavery in 
these United States. I am persuaded that I 
only say what the vast majority of our people 
feel and believe. I do not forget the better 
characteristics of African slavery as it existed 
among us for so long a time under the sanction 
of national law and under the protection of the 
Constitution of the United States ; I do not 
forget that its worst features were often cruelly 
exaggerated, and that its best were unfairly 
minified ; more than all, I do not forget that, in 
the providence of God, a work that is without a 
parallel in history was done on the Southern 
plantations,^ — a work that was begun by such 
men as Bishop Capers of South Carolina, Lov- 
ick Pierce and Bishop Andrew of Georgia, and 
by men like-minded with them, — a work whose 
expenses were met by the slave-holders them- 
selves, — a work that resulted in the Christianiz- 
ing of a full half million of the African people, 
who became communicants of our churches, and 



320 A T TIC US G. HA YGOOD. 

of nearly the ^vhole four or five millions who 
were brought largely under the all-pervasive 
and redeeming influence of our holy religion. 

I have nothing to say at this time of the 
particular " war measure " that brought about 
their immediate and unconditioned enfranchise- 
ment, only that it is history, and that it is done 
for once and for all. I am not called on, in 
order to justify my position, to approve the 
political unwisdom of suddenly placing the bal- 
lot in the hands of nearly a million of unquali- 
fied men — only that, since it is done, this also 
is histor}', that we of the South should accept, 
and that our fellow-citizens of the North 
should never disturb it. But all these things, bad 
as they may have been, and unfortunate as 
they may yet be, are only incidental to the one 
great historic fact, that slavery exists no more. 
For this fact I devoutly thank God this day. 
And on many accounts : 

I. For the negroes themselves. While they 
have suffered and will suffer many things in 
their struggle for existence, I do nevertheless 
believe that in the long run it is best for them. 
How soon they shall realize the possibilities of 
their new relations depends largely, perhaps 
most, on themselves. Much depends on those 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 32 1 

who, under God, set them free. By every token 
this whole nation should undertake the problem 
of their education. That problem will have to 
be worked out on the basis of co-operation ; 
that is, they must be helped to help themselves. 
To make their education an absolute gratuity 
will perpetuate many of the misconceptions and 
weaknesses of character which now embarrass 
and hinder their progress. Much also depends 
on the Southern white people, their sympathy, 
their justice, their wise and helpful co-operation. 
This we should give them, not reluctantly, but 
gladly, for their good and for the safety of all, 
for their elevation and for the glory of God. 
How we may do this may be matter for discus- 
sion hereafter. 

2. I am grateful that slavery no longer exists, 
because it is better for the white people of the 
South. It is better for our industries and our 
business, as proved by the crops that free labor 
makes. But by eminence it is better for our 
social and ethical development. We will now 
begin to take our right place among both the 
conservative and aggressive forces of the civil- 
ized and Christian world. 

3. I am grateful because it is unspeakably 
better for our children and our children's chil- 



322 A T TIC US G. HA YGOOD. 

dren. It is better for them in a thousand ways. I 
have not time for discussion in detail now. But 
this, if nothing else, proves the truth of my 
position : there are more white children at work 
in the South to-day than ever before. And this 
goes far to account for the six million bales of 
cotton. Our children are growing up to believe 
that idleness is vagabondage. One other thing 
I wish to say before leaving this point. We 
hear much about the disadvantages to our chil- 
dren of leaving them among several millions of 
freedmen. I recognize them, and feel them ; 
but I would rather leave my children among 
several millions of free negroes than among 
several millions of negroes in slavery. 

But, leaving out of view at this time all dis- 
cussion of the various benefits that may come 
through the enfranchisement of the negroes, I 
am thankful on the broad and unqualified 
ground that there is now no slavery in all our 
land. 

Does any one say to me this day : " You 
have got new light ; you have changed the 
opinions you entertained twenty years ago." 
I answer humbly, but gratefully, and without 
qualification : " I have got new light. I do now 
believe many things that I did not believe 



THANKSGIVING SERMON. 323 

twenty years ago. Moreover, if it please God 
to spare me in this world twenty years longer, 
I hope to have, on many difficult problems, 
more new light. I expect, if I see the dawn of 
1900, to believe some things that I now reject, 
and to reject some things that I now believe. 
And I shall not be alone." * * * 

My friends, my neighbors, and my pupils, I 
declare to you my hope that, in twenty years 
from now, the words " the South " shall have 
only a geographical significance. * * * I have 
spoken what I solemnly believe to be the truth. 
Moreover, the time has fully come when these 
truths should be spoken by somebody ; and I 
try to do my part, persuaded that before many 
years there will happily be no longer any occa- 
sion or need for them to be spoken. There is 
no^eason why the South should be despondent. 
Let us cultivate industry and economy, observe 
law and order, practise virtue and justice, walk 
in truth and righteousness, and press on with 
strong hearts and good hopes. The true golden 
day of the South is yet to dawn. But the light 
is breaking, and presently the shadows will flee 
away. Its fulness of splendor I may never 
see ; but my children will see it, and I wish 
them to get ready for it while they may. 



VIII. 
FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 



VIII. 
FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

The periods into which this series has been 
divided will furnish, perhaps, some key to the 
brief summary of tariff discussion in the United 
States which follows. For it is not at all true 
that tariff discussion or decision has been iso- 
lated ; on the contrary, it has influenced, and 
been influenced by, every other phase of the 
national development of the country. 

Bancroft has laid none too great stress on 
the influence of the English mercantile system 
in forcing the American Revolution, and on 
the attitude of the Revolution as an organized 
revolt against the English system. One of the 
first steps by which the Continental Congress 
asserted its claim to independent national ac- 
tion was the throwing open of American ports 
to the commerce of all nations — that is, to free 
327 



328 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

trade. It should, however, be added that the 
extreme breadth of this hberahty was due to 
the inabihty of Congress to impose any duties 
on imports ; it had a choice only between abso- 
lute prohibition and absolute free trade, and it 
chose the latter. The States were not so lim- 
ited. Both under the revolutionary Congress 
and under the Confederation they retained the 
entire duty power, and they showed no fond- 
ness for free trade. Commerce in general was 
light, and tariff receipts, even in the commercial 
States, were of no great importance ; but, wher- 
ever it was possible, commercial regulations 
were framed in disregard of the free-trade prin- 
ciple. In order to retain the trade in firewood 
and vegetables within her own borders, New 
York, in 1787, even laid prohibitory duties on 
Connecticut and New Jersey boats ; and retali- 
atory measures were begun by the two States 
attacked. 

The Constitution gave to Congress, and for- 
bade to the States, the power to regulate com- 
merce. As soon as the Constitution came to 



FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 329 

be put into operation, the manner and objects 
of the regulation of commerce by Congress 
became a pubHc question. Many other con- 
siderations were complicated with it. It was 
necessary for the United States to obtain a 
revenue, and this could most easily be done by 
a tariff of duties on imports. It was necessary 
for the Federalist majority to consider the 
party interests both in the agricultural States, 
which would object to protective duties, and in 
the States which demanded them. But the 
highest consideration in the mind of Hamilton 
and the most influential leaders of the party 
seems to have been the maintenance of the 
Union. The repulsive force of the States 
toward one another was still suf^ciently strong 
to be an element of constant and recognized 
danger to the Union. One method of over- 
coming it, as a part of the whole Hamiltonian 
policy, was to foster the growth of manufac- 
tures as an interest entirely independent of 
State lines and dependent on the national gov- 
ernment, which would throw its whole influence 



330 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

for the maintenance of the Union. This feeling 
runs through the speeches even of Madison, 
who prefaced his remarks by a declaration in 
favor of " a trade as free as the policy of nations 
would allow." Protection, therefore, began in 
the United States as an instrument of national 
unity, without regard to national profit ; and 
the argument in its favor would have been 
quite as strong as ever to the mind of a legis- 
lator who accepted every deduction as to the 
economic disadvantages of protection. Argu- 
ments for its economic advantages are not 
wanting ; but they have no such form and con- 
sistency as those of subsequent periods. The 
result of the discussion was the tariff act of 
July 4, 1789, whose preamble stated one of its 
objects to be '' the encouragement and protec- 
tion of manufactures." Its average duty, how- 
ever, was but about 8.5 per cent. It was fol- 
lowed by other acts, each increasing the rate of 
general duties, until, at the outbreak of the War 
of 1812, the general rate was about 21 per cent. 
The war added about 6 per cent, to this rate. 



FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 33 1 

Growth toward democracy very commonly 
brings a curious bias toward protection, con- 
trasted with the fundamental free-trade argu- 
ment that a protective system and a system 
of slave labor have identical bases. The bias 
toward a pronounced protective system in the 
United States makes its appearance with the 
rise of democracy; and, after the War of 18 12, 
is complicated with party interests. New Eng- 
land was still the citadel of Federalism. The 
war and its blockade had fostered manufactures 
in New England; and the manufacturing in- 
terest, looking to the Democratic party for 
protection, was a possible force to sap the 
foundations of the citadel. Dallas, of Pennsyl- 
vania, Secretary of the Treasury, prepared, and 
Calhoun carried through Congress, the tariff of 
1 8 16. It introduced several protective features, 
the " minimum " feature, by which the imported 
article was assumed to have cost at least a 
certain amount in calculating duties, and posi- 
tive protection for cottons and woollens. The 
duties paid under this tariff were about 30 per 



332 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

cent, on all imports, or 33 per cent, on dutiable 
goods. In 1824 and 1828, under the lead of 
Clay, tariffs were adopted which made the tariff 
of duties still higher and more systematically 
protective ; they touched high-water mark in 
1830, being 40 per cent, on all imports, or 48.8 
per cent, on dutiable goods. The influence of 
nullification in forcing through the compromise 
tariff of 1833, with its regular decrease of 
duties for ten years, has been stated in the first 
volume. 

Under the workings of the compromise tariff 
there was a steady decrease in the rate on all 
imports, but not in the rate on dutiable goods, 
the comparison being 22 per cent, on total to 
32 per cent, on dutiable for 1833, and 16 per 
cent, on total to 32 per cent, on dutiable for 
1 841. The conjunction of the increase in non- 
dutiable imports and the approach of free trade, 
with general financial distress, gave the Whigs 
success in the elections of 1840; and in 1841 
they set about reviving protection. Unluckily 
for them, their chosen President, Harrison, was 



FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 333 

dead, and his successor, Tyler, a Democrat by- 
nature, taken up for political reasons by the 
Whigs, was deaf to Whig eloquence on the 
subject of the tariff. After an unsuccessful 
effort to secure a high tariff and a distribution 
of the surplus among the States, the semi- 
protective tariff of 1842 became law. Its result 
for the next four years was that the rate on 
dutiable goods was altered very little, while the 
rate on total imports rose from 16 per cent, to 
26 per cent. The return of the Democrats to 
power was marked by the passage of the reve- 
nue tariff of 1846, which lasted, with a slight 
further reduction of duties in 1857, until 1861. 
Under its operation the rates steadily decreased 
until, in 1861, they were 18.14 per cent, on 
dutiable goods, and 11.79. per cent, on total 
imports. 

The platform of the Republican party in the 
election of 1856 made no declaration for or 
against free trade or protection. The results 
of the election showed that the electoral votes 
of Pennsylvania and Illinois would have been 



334 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

sufficient to give the party a victory in 1856. 
Both party poUcy and a natural regard to its 
strong Whig membership dictated a return to 
the protective feature* of the Whig policy. In 
March, i860, Mr. Morrill introduced a protec- 
tive tariff bill in the House of Representatives, 
and it passed that body; and, in June, the Re- 
publican National Convention adopted, as one 
of its resolutions, a declaration in favor of a 
protective system. The Democratic Senate 
postponed the Morrill bill until the following 
session. When it came up again for considera- 
tion, in February, 1861, conditions had changed 
very considerably. Seven States had seceded, 
taking off fourteen Senators opposed to the 
bill ; and it was passed. It was signed by 
President Buchanan, March 2, 1861, and went 
into operation April i, raising the rates to about 
20 per cent. In August and in December, 
two other acts were passed, raising the rates 
still higher. These were followed by other in- 
creases, which ran the maximum up, in 1868, to 
48 per cent, on dutiable goods, the highest rate 



FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 335 

from i860 to date. It may be noted, however, 
that the rate of 1830 — 48.8 per cent, on duti- 
able goods — still retains its rank as the highest 
in our history. 

The controlling necessity for ready money, 
to prevent the over-issue of bonds and green- 
backs, undoubtedly gained votes in Congress 
sufificient to sustain the policy of protection, as 
a means of putting the capital of the country 
into positions where it could be easily reached 
by internal-revenue taxation. This conjunc- 
tion of internal revenue and protection proved 
a mutual support until the payment of the war 
debt had gone so far as to provoke the reaction. 
The Democratic National Convention of 1876 
attacked the tariff system as a masterpiece of 
iniquity, but no distinct issue was made be- 
tween the parties on this question. In 1880 
and 1884, the Republican party was the one to 
force the issue of protection or free trade upon 
its opponent, but its opponent evaded it. 

In 1884, both parties admit the necessity of 
a reduction in the rates of duties, if for no other 



336 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 

reason, in order to reduce the surplus of Gov- 
ernment receipts over expenditures, which is a 
constant stimulus to congressional extrava- 
gance. The Republican policy is in general to 
retain the principle of protection in the reduc- 
tion ; while the Democratic policy, so far as it 
is defined, is to deal as tenderly as possible 
with interests which have become vested under 
a protective system. What influence will be 
exerted by the present over-production and de- 
pression in business cannot, of course, be fore- 
told ; but the report of Mr. McCulloch, Secretary 
of the Treasury, in December, 1884, indicates 
an attempt to induce manufacturers to submit 
to an abandonment of protection, as a means 
of securing a decrease in cost of production, 
and a consequent foreign market for surplus 
product. 

In taking Clay's speech in 1832 as the repre- 
sentative statement- of the argument for pro- 
tection, the editor has consulted Professor 
Thompson, of the University of Pennsylvania, 
and has been guided by his advice. On the 



FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 337 

other side, the statement of Representative 
Hurd, in 1881, has been taken as, on the whole, 
the best summary of the free-trade argument. 
In both cases, the diflficulty has been in the 
necessary exclusion of merely written argu- 
ments. 



HENRY CLAY, 

OF KENTUCKY. 

(born 1777, DIED 1852.) 



ON THE AMERICAN SYSTEM ; IN THE UNITED STATES 
SENATE, FEBRUARY 2-6, 1832. 

The question which we are now called upon 
to determine, is not, whether we shall establish 
a new and doubtful system of policy, just pro- 
posed, and for the first time presented to our 
consideration, but whether we shall break down 
and destroy a long-established system, carefully 
and patiently built up and sanctioned, during a 
series of years, again and again, by the nation 
and its highest and most revered authorities. 
And are we not bound deliberately to consider 
whether we can proceed to this work of destruc- 
tion without a violation of the public faith ? 
The people of the United States have justly 
supposed that the policy of protecting their in- 
dustry against foreign legislation and foreign 
industry was fully settled, not by a single act, 
338 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 339 

but by repeated and deliberate acts of govern- 
ment, performed at distant and frequent inter- 
vals. In full confidence that the policy was 
firmly and unchangeably fixed, thousands upon 
thousands have invested their capital, pur- 
chased a vast amount of real and other estate, 
made permanent establishments, and accommo- 
dated their industry. Can we expose to utter 
and irretrievable ruin this countless multitude, 
without justly incurring the reproach of vio- 
lating the national faith ? * * * 

When gentlemen have succeeded in their 
design of an immediate or gradual destruction 
of the American system, what is their substi- 
tute ? Free trade ! The call for free trade is 
as unavailing, as the cry of a spoiled child in its 
nurse's arms, for the moon, or the stars that 
glitter in the firmament of heaven. It never 
has existed, it never will exist. Trade implies 
at least two parties. To be free, it should be 
fair, equal, and reciprocal. But if we throw our 
ports wide open to the admission of foreign 
productions, free of all duty, what ports of any 
other foreign nation shall we find open to the 
free admission of our surplus produce ? We may 
break down all barriers to free trade on our 
part, but the work will not be complete until 



340 HENRY CLAY 

foreign powers shall have removed theirs. 
There would be freedom on one side, and re- 
strictions, prohibitions, and exclusions on the 
other. The bolts and the bars and the chains of 
all other nations will remain undisturbed. It 
is, indeed, possible, that our industry and com- 
merce would accommodate themselves to this 
unequal and unjust state of things ; for, such is 
the flexibility of our nature, that it bends itself 
to all circumstances. The wretched prisoner 
incarcerated in a jail, after a long time, becomes 
reconciled to his solitude, and regularly notches 
down the passing days of his confinement. 

Gentlemen deceive themselves. It is not free 
trade that they are recommending to our ac- 
ceptance. It is, in effect, the British colonial 
system that we are invited to adopt ; and, if 
their policy prevails, it will lead substantially to 
the recolonization of these States, under the 
commercial dominion of Great Britain. * * * 

I dislike this resort to authority, and espe- 
cially foreign and interested authority, for the 
support of principles of public policy. I would 
greatly prefer to meet gentlemen upon the 
broad ground of fact, of experience, and of 
reason ; but, since they will appeal to British 
names and authority, I feel myself compelled 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 34 1 

to imitate their bad example. Allow me to 
quote from the speech of a member of the 
British Parliament, bearing the same family 
name with my Lord Goderich, but whether or 
not a relation of his, I do not know. The 
member alluded to was arguing against the 
violation of the treaty of Methuen — that treaty 
not less fatal to the interests of Portugal than 
would be the system of gentlemen to the best 
interests of America, — and he went on to say : 

"' It was idle for us to endeavor to persuade other 
nations to join with us in adopting the principles of 
70 hat was called free trade.' Other nations knew^ as 
well as the noble lord opposite, and those who acted with 
him, what we meant by free trade ' was nothing 
more nor less than, by means of the great advantages 
we enjoyed, to get a monopoly of all their markets for 
our manufactures, and to prevent them, one and all, 
from ever becoming manufacturing nations. When 
the system of reciprocity and free trade had been 
proposed to a French ambassador, his remark was, 
that the plan was excellent in theory, but, to make 
it fair in practice, it would be necessary to defer 
the attempt to put it in execution for half a century, 
until France should be on the same footing with 
Great Britain, in marine, in manufactures, in capi- 
tal, and the many other peculiar advantages which 
it now enjoyed. The policy that France acted on 



342 HENRY CLAY, 

was that of encouraging its native manufactures, 
and it was a wise policy ; because, if it were freely 
to admit our manufactures, it would speedily be 
reduced to the rank of an agricultural nation, and 
therefore a poor nation, as all must be that depend 
exclusively upon agriculture. America acted, too, 
upon the same principle with France. America 
legislated for futurity — legislated for an increasing 
population. America, too, was prospering under 
this system. In twenty years, America would be 
independent of England for manufactures alto- 
gether. * * * But since the peace, France, 
Germany, America, and all the other countries 
of the world, had proceeded upon the principle 
of encouraging and protecting native manufac- 
turers." * * * 

I regret, Mr. President, that one topic has, I 
think, unnecessarily been introduced into this, 
debate. I allude to the charge brought against 
the manufacturing system, as favoring the 
growth of aristocracy. If it were true, would 
gentlemen prefer supporting foreign accumula- 
tions of wealth by that description of industry, 
rather than in their own country? But is it 
correct? The joint-stock companies of the 
North, as I understand them, are nothing more 
than associations, sometimes of hundreds, by 
means of which the small earnings of many are 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 343 

brought into a common stock, and the associ- 
ates, obtaining corporate privileges, are en- 
abled to prosecute, under one superintending 
head, their business to better advantage. 
Nothing can be more essentially democratic or 
better devised to counterpoise the influence of 
individual wealth. In Kentucky, almost every 
manufactory known to me is in the hands of en- 
terprising and self-made men, who have ac- 
quired whatever wealth they possess by patient 
and diligent labor. Comparisons are odious, and 
but in defence would not be made by me. But 
is there more tendency to aristocracy in a manu- 
factory, supporting hundreds of freemen, or in a 
cotton plantation, with its not less numerous 
slaves, sustaining perhaps only two white fami- 
lies — that of the master and the overseer? 

I pass, with pleasure, from this disagreeable 
topic, to two general propositions which cover 
the entire ground of debate. The first is, that, 
under the operation of the American system, 
the objects which it protects and fosters are 
brought to the consumer at cheaper prices than 
they commanded prior to its introduction, or, 
than they would command if it did not exist. 
If that be true, ought not the country to be 
gontented and satisfied with the system, unless 



344 HENRY CLAY. 

the second proposition, which I mean presently 
also to consider, is unfounded ? And that is, 
that the tendency of the system is to sustain, 
and that it has upheld, the prices of all our 
agricultural and other produce, including cot- 
ton. 

And is the fact not indisputable that all es- 
sential objects of consumption affected by the 
tariff are cheaper and better since the act of 
1824 than they were for several years prior to 
that law? I appeal for its truth to common 
observation, and to all practical men. I appeal 
to the farmer of the country whether he does 
not purchase on better terms his iron, salt, 
brown sugar, cotton goods, and woollens, for his 
laboring people ? And I ask the cotton-planter 
if he has not been better and more cheaply sup- 
plied with his cotton-bagging? In regard to 
this latter article, the gentleman from South 
Carolina was mistaken in supposing that I 
complained that, under the existing duty, the 
Kentucky manufacturer could not compete with 
the Scotch. The Kentuckian furnishes a more 
substantial and a cheaper article, and at a 
more uniform and regular price. But it was 
the frauds, the violations of law, of which I did 
complain ; not smuggling, in the common sense 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 345 

of that practice, which has something bold, dar- 
ing, and enterprising in it, but mean, barefaced 
cheating, by fraudulent invoices and false de- 
nominations. 

I plant myself upon this fact, of cheapness 
and superiority, as upon impregnable ground. 
Gentlemen may tax their ingenuity, and pro- 
duce a thousand speculative solutions of the 
fact, but the fact itself will remain undisturbed. 
Let us look into some particulars. The total 
consumption of bar-iron in the United States 
is supposed to be about 146,000 tons, of which 
112,866 tons are made within the country, and 
the residue imported. The number of men em- 
ployed in the manufacture is estimated at 29,- 
254, and the total number of persons subsisted 
by it at 146,273. The measure of protection 
extended to this necessary article was never 
fully adequate until the passage of the act of 
1828; and what has been the consequence? 
The annual increase of quantity since that 
period has been in a ratio of near twenty-five 
per centum, and the wholesale price of bar-iron 
in the Northern cities was, in 1828, $105 per 
ton; in 1829, $100; in 1830, $90; and in 1831, 
from $85 to $75 — constantly diminishing. We 
import very little English iron, and that which 



346 HENRY CLAY. 

we do is very inferior, and only adapted to a few 
purposes. In instituting a comparison between 
that inferior article and our superior iron, sub- 
jects entirely different are compared. They are 
made by different processes. The English can- 
not make iron of equal quality to ours at a less 
price than we do. They have three classes, 
best-best, and best, and ordinary. It is the lat- 
ter which is imported. Of the whole amount 
imported there is only about 4,000 tons of 
foreign iron that pays the high duty, the resi- 
due paying only a duty of about thirty per 
centum, estimated on the prices of the importa- 
tion of 1829. Our iron ore is superior to that 
of Great Britain, yielding often from sixty to 
eighty per centum, while theirs produces only 
about twenty-five. This fact is so well known 
that I have heard of recent exportations of iron 
ore to England. 

It has been alleged that bar-iron, being a raw 
material, ought to be admitted free, or with low 
duties, for the sake of the manufacturers them- 
selves. But I take this to be the true principle : 
that if our country is producing a raw material 
of prime necessity, and with reasonable protec- 
tion can produce it in sufificient quantity to 
supply our wants, that raw material ought to 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 347 

be protected, although it may be proper to 
protect the article also out of which it is manu- 
factured. The tailor will ask protection for 
himself, but wishes it denied to the grower of 
wool and the manufacturer of broadcloth. The 
cotton-planter enjoys protection for the raw 
material, but does not desire it to be extended 
to the cotton manufacturer. The ship-builder 
will ask protection for navigation, but does not 
wish it extended to the essential articles which 
enter into the construction of his ship. Each 
in his proper vocation solicits protection, but 
would have it denied to all other interests 
which are supposed to come into collision with 
his. 

Now% the duty of the statesman is to elevate 
himself above these petty conflicts ; calmly to 
survey all the various interests, and deliberately 
to proportion the measures of protection to each 
according to its nature and the general wants of 
society. It is quite possible that, in the degree 
of protection which has been afforded to the 
various workers in iron, there may be some 
error committed, although I have lately read an 
argument of much ability, proving that no in- 
justice has really been done to them. If there 
be, it ought to be remedied. 



348 HENRY CLAY. 

The next article to which I would call the 
attention of the Senate, is that of cotton fabrics. 
The success of our manufacture of coarse cot- 
tons is generally admitted. It is demonstrated 
by the fact that they meet the cotton fabrics of 
other countries in foreign markets, and main- 
tain a successful competition with them. There 
has been a gradual increase of the exports of 
this article, which is sent to Mexico and the 
South American republics, to the Mediterra- 
nean, and even to Asia. * * * 

I hold in my hand a statement, derived from 
the most authentic source, showing that the 
identical description of cotton cloth, which sold 
in 1817 at twenty-nine cents per yard, was sold 
in 1 8 19 at twenty-one cents, in 1821 at nine- 
teen and a half cents, in 1823 at seventeen 
cents, in 1825 at fourteen and a half cents, in 
1827 at thirteen cents, in 1829 at nine cents, in 
1830 at nine and a half cents, and in 183 1 at 
from ten and a half to eleven. Such is the 
wonderful effect of protection, competition, and 
improvement in skill, combined. The year 
1829 was one of some suffering to this branch 
of industry, probably owing to the principle of 
competition being pushed too far. Hence we 
observe a small rise of the article of the next 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 349 

two years. The introduction of calico-printing 
into the United States, constitutes an important 
era in our manufacturing industry. It com- 
menced about the year 1825, and has since 
made such astonishing advances, that the whole 
quantity now annually printed is but little short 
of forty millions of yards — about two thirds of 
our whole consumption. * * * 

In respect to woollens, every gentleman's own 
observation and experience will enable him to 
judge of the great reduction of price which has 
taken place in most of these articles since the 
tariff of 1824. It would have been still greater, 
but for the high duty on raw material, imposed 
for the particular benefit of the farming in- 
terest. But, without going into particular de- 
tails, I shall limit myself to inviting the atten- 
tion of the Senate to a single article of general 
and necessary use. The protection given to 
flannels in 1828 was fully adequate. It has 
enabled the American manufacturer to obtain 
complete possession of the American market ; 
and now, let us look at the effect. I have be- 
fore me a statement from a highly respectable 
mercantile house, showing the price of four 
descriptions of flannels during six years. The 
average price of them, in 1826, was thirty-eight 



350 HENRY CLAY. 

and three quarter cents; in 1827, thirty-eight; 
in 1 828 (the year of the tariff), forty-six ; in 
1829, thirty-six ; in 1830, (notwithstanding the 
advance in the price of wool), thirty-two ; and 
in 1 83 1, thirty-two and one quarter. These 
facts require no comments. I have before me 
another statement of a practical and respecta- 
ble man, well versed in the flannel manufacture 
in America and England, demonstrating that 
the cost of manufacture is precisely the same 
in both countries : and that, although a yard of 
flannel which would sell in England at fifteen 
cents would command here twenty-two, the 
difference of seven cents is the exact difference 
between the cost in the two countries of the six 
ounces of wool contained in a yard of flannel. 

Brown sugar, during ten years, from 1792 to 
1802, with a duty of one and a half cents per 
pound, averaged fourteen cents per pound. 
The same article, during ten years, from 1820 
to 1830, with a duty of three cents, has aver- 
aged only eight cents per pound. Nails, with 
a duty of five cents per pound, are selling at 
six cents. Window-glass, eight by ten, prior 
to the tariff of 1824, sold at twelve or thirteen 
dollars per hundred feet ; it now sells for three 
dollars and seventy-five cents. * * * 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 35 I 

This brings me to consider what I apprehend 
to have been the most efficient of all the causes 
in the reduction of the prices of manufactured 
articles, and that is competition. By competi- 
tion the total amount of the supply is increased, 
and by increase of the supply a competition in 
the sale ensues, and this enables the consumer 
to buy at lower rates. Of all human powers 
operating on the affairs of mankind, none is 
greater than that of competition. It is action 
and reaction. It operates between individuals 
of the same nation, and between different 
nations. It resembles the meeting of the 
mountain torrent, grooving, by its precipitous 
motion, its own channel, and ocean's tide. 
Unopposed, it sweeps every thing before it ; 
but, counterpoised, the waters become calm, 
safe, and regular. It is like the segments of a 
circle or an arch : taken separately, each is 
nothing ; but in their combination they produce 
efficiency, symmetry, and perfection. By the 
American system this vast power has been 
excited in America, and brought into being to 
act in cooperation or collision with European 
industry. Europe acts within itself, and with 
America ; and America acts within itself, and 
with Europe. The consequence is the reduc- 



352 HENRY CLAY. 

tion of prices in both hemispheres. Nor is it 
fair to argue from the reduction of prices in Eu- 
rope to her own presumed skill and labor ex- 
clusively. We affect her prices, and she affects 
ours. This must always be the case, at least 
in reference to any articles as to which there is 
not a total non-intercourse ; and if our industry, 
by diminishing the demand for her supplies, 
should produce a diminution in the price of 
those supplies, it would be very unfair to ascribe 
that reduction to her ingenuity, instead of 
placing it to the credit of our own skill and 
excited industry. 

Practical men understand very well this state 
of the case, whether they do or do not compre- 
hend the causes which produce it. I have in 
my possession a letter from a respectable mer- 
chant, well known to me, in which he says, after 
complaining of the operation of the tariff of 
1828, on the articles to which it applies, some 
of which he had imported, and that his pur- 
chases having been made in England before the 
passage of that tariff was known, it produced 
such an effect upon the English market that the 
articles could not be resold without loss, and he 
adds : " For it really appears that, when addi- 
tional duties are laid upon an article, it then 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 353 

becomes lower instead of higher ! " This would 
not probably happen where the supply of the 
foreign article did not exceed the home de- 
mand, unless upon the supposition of the in- 
creased duty having excited or stimulated the 
measure of the home production. 

The great law of price is determined by sup- 
ply and demand. What affects either affects 
the price. If the supply is increased, the de- 
mand remaining the same, the price declines ; 
if the demand is increased, the supply remain- 
ing the same, the price advances ; if both 
supply and demand are undiminished, the 
price is stationary, and the price is influ- 
enced exactly in proportion to the degree of 
disturbance to the demand or supply. It is, 
therefore, a great error to suppose that an ex- 
isting or new duty necessarily becomes a com- 
ponent element to its exact amount of price. 
If the proportions of demand and supply are 
varied by the duty, either in augmenting the 
supply or diminishing the demand, or vice versa, 
the price is afifected to the extent of that varia- 
tion. But the duty never beconies an integral 
part of the price, except in the instances where 
the demand and the supply remain after the 
duty is imposed precisely what they were be- 



354 HENRY CLAY. 

fore, or the demand is increased, and the supply 
remains stationary. 

Competition, therefore, wherever existing, 
whether at home or abroad, is the parent cause 
of cheapness. If a high duty excites produc- 
tion at home, and the quantity of the domestic 
article exceeds the amount which had been pre- 
viously imported, the price will fall. * * * 

But it is argued that if, by the skill, experi- 
ence, and perfection which we have acquired in 
certain branches of manufacture, they can be 
made as cheap as similar articles abroad, and 
enter fairly into competition with them, why 
not repeal the duties as to those articles? And 
why should we ? Assuming the truth of the 
supposition, the foreign article would not be 
introduced in the regular course of trade, but 
would remain excluded by the possession of the 
home market, which the domestic article had ob- 
tained. The repeal, therefore, would have no le- 
gitimate effect. But might not the foreign arti- 
cle be imported in vast quantities, to glut our 
markets, break down our establishments, and 
ultimately to enable the foreigner to monopo- 
lize the supply of our consumption ? America 
is the greatest foreign market for European 
manufactures. It is that to which European 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 355 

attention is constantly directed. If a great 
house becomes bankrupt there, its storehouses 
are emptied, and the goods are shipped to 
America, where, in consequence of our auctions, 
and our custom-house credits, the greatest facili- 
ties are afforded in the sale of them. Combina- 
tions among manufacturers might take place, or 
even the operations of foreign governments 
might be directed to the destruction of our 
establishments. A repeal, therefore, of one 
protecting duty, from some one or all of these 
causes, would be followed by flooding the 
country with the foreign fabric, surcharging the 
market, reducing the price, and a complete 
prostration of our manufactories ; after Avhich 
the foreigner would leisurely look about to in- 
demnify himself in the increased prices which 
he would be enabled to command by his mon- 
opoly of the supply of our consumption. What 
American citizen, after the government had dis- 
played this vacillating policy, would be again 
tempted to place the smallest confidence in the 
public faith, and adventure once more into this 
branch of industry? 

Gentlemen have allowed to the manufactur- 
ing portions of the community no peace ; they 
have been constantly threatened with the over- 



356 HENRY CLAY. 

throw of the American system. From the year 
1820, if not from 1816, down to this time, they 
have been held in a condition of constant alarm 
and insecurity. Nothing is more prejudicial to 
the great interests of a nation than an unsettled 
and varying policy. Although every appeal to 
the National Legislature has been responded to 
in conformity with the wishes and sentiments 
of the great majority of the people, measures 
of protection have only been carried by such 
small majorities as to excite hopes on the one 
hand, and fears on the other. . Let the country 
breathe, let its vast resources be developed, let 
its energies be fully put forth, let it have tran- 
quillity, and, my word for it, the degree of per- 
fection in the arts which it will exhibit will be 
greater than that which has been presented, 
astonishing as our progress has been. Although 
some branches of our manufactures might, and 
in foreign markets now do, fearlessly contend 
with similar foreign fabrics, there are many 
others yet in their infancy, struggling with the 
difficulties which encompass them. We should 
look at the whole system, and recollect that 
time, when we contemplate the great move- 
ments of a nation, is very different from the 
short period which is allotted for the duration 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 357 

of individual life. The honorable gentleman 
from South Carolina well and eloquently said, 
in 1824: " No great interest of any country ever 
grew up in a day ; no new branch of industry 
can become firmly and profitably established 
but in a long course of years ; every thing, in- 
deed, great or good, is matured by slow de- 
grees ; that which attains a speedy maturity is 
of small value, and is destined to brief exist- 
ence. It is the order of Providence, that 
powers gradually developed, shall alone attain 
permanency and perfection. Thus must it be 
with our national institutions, and national 
character itself." 

I feel most seAsibly, Mr. President, how much 
I have trespassed upon the Senate. My apol- 
ogy is a deep and deliberate conviction, that 
the great cause under debate involves the pros- 
perity and the destiny of the Union. But 
the best requital I can make, for the friendly 
indulgence which has been extended to me by 
the Senate, and for which I shall ever retain 
sentiments of lasting gratitude, is to proceed 
with as little delay as practicable, to the con- 
clusion of a discourse which has not been more 
tedious to the Senate than exhausting to me. 
I have now to consider the remaining of the 



358 HENRY CLAY. 

two propositions which I have already an- 
nounced. That is — 

Second, that under the operation of the 
American system, the products of our agricul- 
ture command a higher price than they would 
do without it, by the creation of a home market, 
and by the augmentation of wealth produced 
by manufacturing industry, which enlarges our 
powers of consumption both of domestic and 
foreign articles. The importance of the home 
market is among the established maxims which 
are universally recognized by all writers and all 
men. However some may differ as to the 
relative advantages of the foreign and the home 
market, none deny to the latter great value and 
high consideration. It is nearer to us ; beyond 
the control of foreign legislation ; and undis- 
turbed by those vicissitudes to which all inter- 
national intercourse is more or less exposed. 
The most stupid are sensible of the benefit of a 
residence in the vicinity of a large manufactory, 
or of a market-town, of a good road, or of a 
navigable stream, which connects their farms 
with some great capital. If the pursuits of all men 
were perfectly the same, although they would 
be in possession of the greatest abundance of 
the particular products of their industry, they 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 359 

might, at the same time, be in extreme want of 
other necessary articles of human subsistence. 
The uniformity of the general occupation would 
preclude all exchange, all commerce. It is only 
in the diversity of the vocations of the members 
of a community that the means can be found 
for those salutary exchanges which conduce to 
the general prosperity. And the greater that 
diversity, the more extensive and the more ani- 
mating is the circle of exchange. Even if foreign 
markets were freely and widely open to the 
reception of our agricultural produce, from its 
bulky nature, and the distance of the interior, 
and the dangers of the ocean, large portions of 
it could never profitably reach the foreign 
market. But let us quit this field of theory, 
clear as it is, and look at the practical operation 
of the system of protection, beginning with the 
most valuable staple of our agriculture. 

In considering this staple, the first circum- 
stance that excites our surprise is the rapidity 
with which the amount of it has annually in- 
creased. Does not this fact, however, demon- 
strate that the cultivation of it could not have 
been so very unprofitable ? If the business 
were ruinous, would more and more have 
annually engaged in it? The quantity in 



360 HENR V CLA V. 

1816 was eighty-one millions of pounds ; in 
1826, two hundred and four millions; and in 
1830, near three hundred millions ! The ground 
of greatest surprise is that it has been able to 
sustain even its present price with such an 
enormous augmentation of quantity. It could 
not have been done but for the combined 
operation of three causes, by which the con- 
sumption of cotton fabrics has been greatly ex- 
tended in consequence of their reduced prices: 
first, competition ; second, the improvement of 
labor-saving machinery ; and thirdly, the low 
price of the raw material. The crop of 18 19, 
amounting to eighty-eight millions of pounds, 
produced twenty-one millions of dollars ; the 
crop of 1823, when the amount was swelled to 
one hundred and seventy-four millions (almost 
double of that of 18 19), produced a less sum by 
more than half a million of dollars ; and the 
crop of 1824, amounting to thirty millions of 
pounds less than that of the preceding year, 
produced a million and a half of dollars more. 

If there be any foundation for the established 
law of price, supply, and demand, ought not 
the fact of this great increase of the supply to 
account satisfactorily for the alleged low price 
of cotton ? * * * 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 36 1 

Let US suppose that the home demand for 
cotton, which has been created by the American 
system, should cease, and that the two hundred 
thousand bales which the home market now 
absorbs were now thrown into the glutted mar- 
kets of foreign countries ; would not the effect 
inevitably be to produce a further and great re- 
duction in the price of the article ? If there be 
any truth in the facts and principles which I 
have before stated and endeavored to illustrate, 
it cannot be doubted that the existence of 
American manufactures has tended to increase 
the demand and extend the consumption of the 
raw material ; and that, but for this increased 
demand, the price of the article would have 
fallen possibly one half lower than it now is. 
The error of the opposite argument is in assum- 
ing one thing, which being denied, the whole 
fails — that is, it assumes that the wJiole labor of 
the United States would be profitably employed 
without manufactures. Now, the truth is that 
the system excites and creates labor, and this 
labor creates wealth, and this new wealth com- 
municates additional ability to consume, which 
acts on all the objects contributing to human 
comfort and enjoyment. The amount of cot- 
ton imported into the two ports of Boston and 



362 HENR Y CLA Y. 

Providence alone during the last year (and it 
was imported exclusively for the home manu- 
ture) was 109,517 bales. 

On passing from that article to others of our 
agricultural productions, we shall find not less 
gratifying facts. The total quantity of flour 
imported into Boston, during the same year, 
was 284,504 barrels, and 3,955 half barrels; of 
which, there were from Virginia, Georgetown, 
and Alexandria, 114,222 barrels; of Indian 
corn, 681,131 bushels; of oats, 239,809 bushels; 
of rye, about 50,000 bushels; and of shorts, 
63,489 bushels ; into the port of Providence, 
71,369 barrels of flour; 216,662 bushels of In- 
dian corn, and 7,772 bushels of rye. And there 
were discharged at the port of Philadelphia, 
420,353 bushels of Indian corn, 201,878 bushels 
of wheat, and 110,557 bushels of rye and bar- 
ley. There were slaughtered in Boston during 
the same year, 1831, (the only Northern city 
from which I have obtained returns,) 33,922 
beef cattle; 15,400 calves; 84,453 sheep, and 
26,871 swine. It is confidently believed that 
there is not a less quantity of Southern f^our 
consumed at the North than eight hundred 
thousand barrels, a greater amount, probably, 
than is shipped to all the foreign markets of 
the world together. 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 363 

What would be the condition of the farming 
country of the United States — of all that por- 
tion which lies north, east, and west of James 
River, including a large part of North Carolina 
— if a home market did not exist for this im- 
mense amount of agricultural produce. With- 
out that market, where could it be sold ? In 
foreign markets? If their restrictive laws did 
not exist, their capacity would not enable them 
to purchase and consume this vast addition to 
their present supplies, which must be thrown in, 
or thrown away, but for the home market. 
But their laws exclude us from their markets. 
I shall content myself by calling the attention 
of the Senate to Great Britain only. The 
duties in the ports of the united kingdom on 
bread-stuffs are prohibitory, except in times of 
dearth. On rice, the duty is fifteen shillings 
sterling per hundred weight, being more than 
one hundred per centum. On manufactured 
tobacco it is nine shillings sterling per pound, or 
about two thousand per centum. On leaf to- 
bacco three shillings per pound, or one thousand 
two hundred per centum. On lumber, and some 
other articles, they are from four hundred to 
fifteen hundred per centum more than on similar 
articles imported from British colonies. In the 



364 HENR V CLA Y. 

British West Indies the duty on beef, pork, 
hams, and bacon, is twelve shilHngs sterling per 
hundred, more than one hundred per centum 
on the first cost of beef and pork in the Western 
States. And yet Great Britain is the power in 
.whose behalf we are called upon to legislate, so 
that we may enable her to purchase our cotton. 
Great Britain, that thinks only of herself in her 
own legislation ! When have we experienced 
justice, much less favor, at her hands? When 
did she shape her legislation with reference to 
the interests of any foreign power ? She is a 
great, opulent, and powerful nation ; but 
haughty, arrogant, and supercilious; not more 
separated from the rest of the world by the sea 
that girts her island, than she is separated in 
feeling, sympathy, or friendly consideration of 
their welfare. Gentlemen, in supposing it im- 
practicable that we should successfully compete 
with her in manufactures, do injustice to the 
skill and enterprise of their own country. Gal- 
lant as Great Britain undoubtedly is, we have 
gloriously contended with her, man to man, gun 
to gun, ship to ship, fleet to fleet, and army to 
army. And I have no doubt we are destined 
to achieve equal success in the more useful, if 
not nobler, contest for superiority in the arts of 
civil life. 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 365 

I could extend and dwell on the long list of 
articles — the hemp, iron, lead, coal, and other 
items — for which a demand is created in the 
home market by the operation of the American 
system ; but I should exhaust the patience of 
the Senate. Where, tvhere should we find a 
market for all these articles, if it did not exist 
at home? What would be the condition of the 
largest portion of our people, and of the terri- 
tory, if this home market were annihilated ? 
How could they be supplied with objects of 
prime necessity ? What would not be the 
certain and inevitable decline in the price of all 
these articles, but for the home market ? And 
allow me, Mr. President, to say, that of all the 
agricultural parts of the United States which 
are benefited by the operation of this system, 
none are equally so with those which border 
the Chesapeake Bay, the lower parts of North 
Carolina, Virginia, and the two shores of Mary- 
land. Their facilities of transportation, and 
proximity to the North, give them decided 
advantages. 

But if all this reasoning were totally falla- 
cious ; if the price of manufactured articles were 
really higher, under the American system, than 
without it, I shouM still argue that high or 



366 HENRY CLAY. 

low prices were themselves relative — relative to 
the ability to pay them. It is in vain to tempt, 
to tantalize us with the lower prices of Euro- 
pean fabrics than our own, if we have nothing 
wherewith to purchase them. If, by the home 
exchanges, we can be supplied with necessary, 
even if they are dearer and worse, articles of 
American production than the foreign, it is 
better than not to be supplied at all. And 
how would the large portion of our country, 
which I have described, be supplied, but for the 
home exchanges ? A poor people, destitute of 
wealth or of exchangeable commodities, have 
nothing to purchase foreign fabrics with. To 
them they are equally beyond their reach, 
whether their cost be a dollar or a guinea. It 
is in this view of the matter that Great Britain, 
by her vast wealth, her excited and protected in- 
dustry, is enabled to bear a burden of taxation, 
which, when compared to that of other nations, 
appears enormous ; but which, when her im- 
mense riches are compared to theirs, is light 
and trivial. The gentleman from South Caro- 
lina has drawn a lively and flattering picture of 
our coasts, bays, rivers, and harbors; and he 
argues that these proclaimed the design of 
Providence that we shouW be a commercial 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 367 

people. I agree with him. We differ only as 
to the means. He would cherish the foreign, 
and neglect the internal, trade. I would foster 
both. What is navigation without ships, or 
ships witnout cargoes? By penetrating the 
bosoms of our mountains, and extracting from 
them their precious treasures ; by cultivating 
the earth, and securing a home market for its 
rich and abundant products ; by employing the 
water power with which we are blessed ; by 
stimulating and protecting our native industry, 
in all its forms ; we shall but nourish and pro- 
mote the prosperity of commerce, foreign and 
domestic. 

I have hitherto considered the question in 
reference only to a state of peace ; but who can 
tell when the storm of war shall again break 
forth ? Have we forgotten so soon the priva- 
tions to which not merely our brave soldiers 
and our gallant tars were subjected, but the 
whole community, during the last war, for the 
want of absolute necessaries ? To what an 
enormous price they rose ! And how inade- 
quate the supply was, at any price ! The states- 
man who justly elevates his views will look be- 
hind as well as forward, and at the existing 
state of things ; and he will graduate the policy 



368 HENRY CLAY. 

which he recommends to all the probable 
exigencies which may arise in the republic. 
Taking this comprehensive range, it would be 
easy to show that the higher prices of peace, if 
prices were higher in peace, were more than 
compensated by the lower prices of war, during 
which supplies of all essential articles are indis- 
pensable to its vigorous, effectual, and glorious 
prosecution. I conclude this part of the argu- 
ment with the hope that my humble exer- 
tions have not been altogether unsuccessful in 
showing : 

First, that the policy which we have been 
considering ought to continue to be regarded 
as the genuine American system. 

Secondly, that the free-trade system, which 
is proposed as its substitute, ought really to be 
considered as the British colonial system. 

Thirdly, that the American system is bene- 
ficial to all parts of the Union, and absolutely 
necessary to much the larger portion. 

Fourthly, that the price of the great staple 
of cotton, and of all our chief productions of 
agriculture, has been sustained and upheld, and 
a decline averted, by the protective system. 

Fifthly, that if the foreign demand for cotton 
has been at all diminished, the diminution has 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 369 

been more than compensated in the additional 
demand created at home. 

Sixthly, that the constant tendency of the 
system, by creating competition among our- 
selves, and between American and European 
industry, reciprocally acting upon each other, 
is to reduce prices of manufactured objects. 

Seventhly, that, in point of fact, objects with- 
in the scope of the policy of protection have 
greatly fallen in price. 

Eighthly, that if, in a season of peace, these 
benefits are experienced, in a season of war, 
when the foreign supply might be cut off, they 
would be much more extensively felt. 

Ninthly, and finally, that the substitution of 
the British colonial system for the American 
system, without benefiting any section of the 
Union, by subjecting us to a foreign legislation, 
regulated by foreign interests, would lead to 
the prostration of our manufactories, general 
impoverishment, and ultimate ruin. * * * 
The danger of our Union does not lie on the 
side of persistence in the American system, but 
on that of its abandonment. If, as I have sup- 
posed and believe, the inhabitants of all 
north and east of James River, and all west of 
the mountains, including Louisiana, are deeply 



370 HENRY CLAY. 

interested in the preservation of that system, 
would they be reconciled to its overthrow ? Can 
it be expected that two thirds, if not three 
fourths, of the people of the United States 
would consent to the destruction of a policy, 
believed to be indispensably necessary to their 
prosperity ? When, too, the sacrifice is made 
at the instance of a single interest, which they 
verily believe will not be promoted by it ? In 
estimating the degree of peril which may be 
incident to two opposite courses of human 
policy, the statesman would be short-sighted 
who should content himself with viewing only 
the evils, real or imaginary, which belong to 
that course which is in practical operation. He 
should lift himself up to the contemplation of 
those greater and more certain dangers which 
might inevitably attend the adoption of the 
alternative course. What would be the condi- 
tion of this Union, if Pennsylvania and New 
York, those mammoth members of our Con- 
federacy, were firmly persuaded that their 
industry was paralyzed, and their prosperity 
blighted, by the enforcement of the British 
colonial system, under the delusive name of 
free trade ? They are now tranquil and happy 
and contented, conscious of their welfare, and 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 37 1 

feeling a salutary and rapid circulation of the 
products of home manufactures and home in- 
dustry, throughout all their great arteries. But 
let that be checked, let them feel that a foreign 
system is to predominate, and the sources of 
their subsistence and comfort dried up ; let New 
England and the West, and the Middle States, 
all feel that they too are the victims of a mis- 
taken policy, and let these vast portions of our 
country despair of any favorable change, and 
then indeed might we tremble for the con- 
tinuance and safety of this Union ! 

And need I remind you, sir, that this derelic- 
tion of the duty of protecting our domestic in- 
dustry, and abandonment of it to the fate of 
foreign legislation, would be directly at war 
with leading considerations which prompted 
the adoption of the present Constitution ? The 
States respectively surrendered to the general 
government the whole power of laying imposts 
on foreign goods. They stripped themselves 
of all power to protect their own manufactures 
by the most efficacious means of encourage- 
ment — the imposition of duties on rival foreign 
fabrics. Did they create that great trust, did 
they voluntarily subject themselves to this 
self-restriction, that the power should remain 



3/2 HENRY CLAY. 

in the Federal government inactive, unex- 
ecuted, and lifeless? Mr. Madison, at the 
commencement of the government, told you 
otherwise. In discussing at that early period 
this very subject, he declared that a failure to 
exercise this power would be a '^ fraud'' upon 
the Northern States, to which may now be 
added the Middle and Western States. 

[Governor Miller asked to what expression 
of Mr. Madison's opinion Mr. Clay referred ; 
and Mr. Clay replied, his opinion, expressed in 
the House of Representatives in 1789, as re- 
ported in Lloyd's Congressional Debates.] 

Gentlemen are greatly deceived as to the hold 
which this system has in the affections of the 
people of the United States. They represent 
that it is the policy of New England, and that 
she is most benefited by it. If there be any 
part of this Union which has been most steady, 
most unanimous, and most determined in its 
support, it is Pennsylvania. Why is not that 
powerful State attacked ? Why pass her over, 
and aim the blow at New England? New 
England came reluctantly into the policy. In 
1824, a majority of her delegation was opposed 
to it. From the largest State of New England 
there was but a solitary vote in favor of the 



THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. 373 

bill. That interesting people can readily ac- 
commodate their industry to any policy, pro- 
vided it be settled. They supposed this was 
fixed, and they submitted to the decrees of 
government. And the progress of public 
opinion has kept pace with the developments 
of the benefits of the system. Now, all New 
England, at least in this House (with the ex- 
ception of one small still voice), is in favor of 
the system. In 1824, all Maryland was against 
it ; now the majority is for it. Then, Louis- 
iana, with one exception, was opposed to it ; 
now, without any exception, she is in favor of 
it. The march of public sentiment is to the 
South. Virginia will be the next convert ; and 
in less than seven years, if there be no obstacles 
from political causes, or prejudices industriously 
instilled, the majority of Eastern Virginia will 
be, as the majority of Western Virginia now 
is, in favor of the American system. North 
Carolina will follow later, but not less cer- 
tainly. Eastern Tennessee is now in favor of 
the system. And, finally, its doctrines will 
pervade the whole Union, and the wonder will 
be, that they ever should have been opposed. 



FRANK H. KURD, 

OF OHIO. 
(born 1841.) 



A TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY ; HOUSE OF REPRE- 
SENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 18, 1881. 

Mr. Chairman : 

At the very threshold it is proper to define the 
terms I shall use and state the exact propositions 
I purpose to maintain. A tariff is a tax upon 
imported goods. Like other taxes which are 
levied, it should be imposed only to raise rev- 
enue for the government. It is true that in- 
cidental protection to some industries will occur 
when the duty is placed upon articles which may 
enter into competition with those of domestic 
manufacture. I do not propose to discuss now 
how this incidental protection shall be dis- 
tributed. This will be a subsequent considera- 
tion when the preliminary question has been 
settled as to what shall be the nature of the 
tariff itself. The present tariff imposes duties 
374 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 375 

Upon nearly four thousand articles, and was 
levied and is defended upon the ground that 
American industries should be protected. Thus 
protection has been made the object ; revenue 
the incident. Indeed, in many cases the duty 
is so high that no revenue whatever is raised 
for the government, and in nearly all so 
high that much less revenue is collected than 
might be realized. So true is this that, if the 
present tariff were changed so as to make it 
thereby a revenue tariff, one fifth at least could 
be added to the receipts of the Treasury from 
imports. Whenever I use the phrase free trade 
or free trader, I mean either a tariff for revenue 
only or one who advocates it. 

So far as a tariff for revenue is concerned, I do 
not oppose it, even though it may contain some 
objectionable incidental protection. The neces- 
sities of the government require large revenues, 
and it is not proposed to interfere with a tariff 
so long as it is levied to produce them ; but, to 
a tariff levied for protection in itself and for its 
own sake, I do object. I therefore oppose the 
present tariff, and the whole doctrine by which 
it is attempted to be justified, I make war 
against all its protective features, and insist that 
the laws which contain them shall be amended, 



376 FRANK H. HURD. 

SO that out of the importations upon which the 
duty is levied the greatest possible revenue for 
the government may be obtained. 

What, then, is the theory of protection ? It 
is based upon the idea that foreign produce im- 
ported into this country will enter into competi- 
tion with domestic products and undersell them 
in the home market, thus crippling if not de- 
stroying domestic production. To prevent 
this, the price of the foreign goods in the home 
market is increased so as to keep them out 
of the country altogether, or to place the 
foreigner, in the cost of production, upon the 
same footing as the American producer. This 
is proposed to be done by levying a duty upon 
the foreign importation. If it be so high that 
the importer cannot pay it and sell the goods at 
a profit, ^the facilities of production between 
this and other countries are said to be equal- 
ized, and the American producer is said to be 
protected. It will be seen, therefore, that pro- 
tection means the increase of price. Without 
it the fabric has no foundation on which to 
rest. If the foreign goods are still imported, 
the importer adds the duty paid to the selling 
price. If he cannot import with profit, the 
American producer raises his price to a point 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 'i^'J'J 

always below that at which the foreign goods 
could be profitably brought into the country, 
and controls the market. In either event, there 
is an increase of price of the products sought to 
be protected. The bald proposition therefore 
is that American industries can and ought 
to be protected by increasing the prices of the 
products of such industries. 

There are three popular opinions, industrious- 
ly cultivated and strengthened by adroit advo- 
cates, upon which the whole system rests, and 
to which appeals are ever confidently made. 
These opinions are erroneous, and lead to false 
conclusions, and should be first considered in 
every discussion of this question. 

The first is, that the balance of trade is in our 
favor when our exportations exceed our impor- 
tations. Upon this theory it is argued that it 
cannot be unwise to put restrictions upon im- 
portations, for they say that at one and the 
same time you give protection to our industries 
and keep the balance of trade in our favor. But 
the slightest investigation will show that this 
proposition cannot be maintained. A single 
illustration, often repeated, but never old in this 
discusion, will demonstrate it. Let a ship set 
sail from Portland, Maine, with a cargo of staves 



378 FRANK H. HURD. 

registered at the port of departure as worth 
$5,000. They are carried to the West India 
Islands, where staves are in demand, and ex- 
changed for sugar or molasses. The ship re- 
turns, and after duty paid the owner sells his 
sugar and molasses at a profit of $5,000. Here 
more has been imported than exported. Upon 
this transaction the protectionist would say that 
the balance of trade was against us $5,000; the 
free trader says that the sum represents the 
profit to the shipper upon his traf^c, and the 
true balance in our favor. 

Suppose that after it has set sail the vessel 
with its cargo had been lost. In such case five 
thousand dollars' worth of goods would have 
been exported, with no importation against it. 
The exportation has exceeded the importation 
that sum. Is not the balance of trade, accord- 
ing to the protection theory, to that amount in 
our favor? Then let the protectionist turn 
pirate and scuttle and sink all the vessels laden 
with our exports, and soon the balance of trade 
in our favor will be large enough to satisfy even 
most advocates of the American protective sys- 
tem. The true theory is that in commerce the 
overplus of the importation above the exporta- 
tion represents the profit accruing to the coun- 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 379 

try. This overplus, deducting the expenses, is 
real wealth added to the land. Push the two 
theories to their last position and the true one 
will be clearly seen. Export every thing, im- 
port nothing, though the balance of trade may 
be said to be overwhelmingly in our favor, there 
is poverty, scarcity, death. Import every thing, 
export nothing, we then will have in addition 
to our own all the wealth of the world in our 
possession. 

Secondly, it is said that a nation should be 
independent of foreign nations, lest in time of 
war it might find itself helpless or defenceless. 
Free trade, it is charged, makes a people de- 
pendent upon foreigners. But trafilic is ex- 
change. Foreign products do not come into a 
country unless domestic products go out. 
This dependence, therefore, is mutual. By 
trade with foreign nations they are as de- 
pendent upon us as we upon them, and in 
the event of a disturbance of peace the nation 
with which we would be at war would lose just 
as much as we would lose, and both as to the 
war would in that regard stand upon terms of 
equality. It must not be forgotten that the 
obstruction of trade between nations is one of 
the greatest occasions of war. It frequently 



380 FRANK H. HURD. 

gives rise to misunderstandings which result in 
serious conflicts. By removing these obstacles 
and making trade as free as possible, nations are 
brought closer together, the interests of their 
people become intermingled, business associa- 
tions are formed between them, which go far 
to keep down national dispute, and prevent the 
wars in which the dependent nation is said to 
be so helpless. Japan and China have for cen- 
turies practised the protective theory of inde- 
pendence of foreigners, and yet, in a war with 
other nations, they would be the most helpless 
people in the world. That nation is the most 
independent which knows most of, and trades 
most with, the world, and by such knowledge 
and trade is able to avail itself of the products 
of the skill, intellect, and genius of all the 
nations of the earth. 

A third erroneous impression sought to be 
made upon the public mind is that whatever in- 
creases the amount of labor in a country is a 
benefit to it. Protection, it is argued, will in- 
crease the amount of labor, and therefore will 
increase a country's prosperity. The error in 
this proposition lies in mistaking the true na- 
ture of labor. It regards it as the end, not as 
the means to an end. Men do not labor merely 



\ 



^ TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 38 1 

for the sake of labor, but that out of its pro- 
ducts they may derive support and comfort for 
themselves and those dependent upon them. 
The result, therefore, does not depend upon the 
amount of labor done, but upon the value of the 
product. That country, therefore, is the most 
prosperous which enables the laborer to obtain 
the greatest possible value for the product of 
his toil, not that which imposes the greatest la- 
bor upon him. If this were not the case men 
were better off before the appliances of steam as 
motive power were discovered, or railroads were 
built, or the telegraph was invented. The man 
who invents a labor-saving machine is a public 
enemy ; and he would be a public benefactor 
who would restore the good old times when the 
farmer never had a leisure day, and the sun 
never set on the toil of the mechanic. No, Mr. 
Chairman, it is the desire of every laborer to get 
the maximum of result from the minimum of 
effort. That system, therefore, can be of no ad- 
vantage to him which, while it gives him em- 
ployment, robs him of its fruits. This, it will 
be seen, protection does, while free trade, giving 
him unrestricted control of the product of his 
labor, enables him to get the fullest value for it 
in markets of his own selection. 



382 FRANK H. HURD. 

The protectionist, relying upon the proposi- 
tions I have thus hurriedly discussed, urges 
many specious reasons for his system, to a few 
of which only do I intend to call attention to- 
day. 

In the first place, it is urged that protection 
will develop the resources of a country, which 
without it would remain undeveloped. Of 
course this, to be of advantage to a country, 
must be a general aggregate increase of develop- 
ment, for if it be an increase of some resources 
as a result of diminution in others, the people 
as a whole can be no better off after protection 
than before. But the general resources cannot 
be increased by a tariff. There can only be 
such an increase by an addition to the disposa- 
ble capital of the country to be applied to the 
development of resources. But legislation can- 
not make this. If it could it would only be 
necessary to enact laws indefinitely to increase 
capital indefinitely. But, if any legislation 
could accomplish this, it would not be protec- 
tive legislation. As already shown, the theory 
of protection is to make prices higher, in order 
to make business profitable. This necessarily in- 
creases the expense of production, which keeps 
foreign capital away, because it can be em- 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 383 

ployed in the protected industries more profit- 
ably elsewhere. The domestic capital, therefore, 
must be relied upon for the proposed develop- 
ment. As legislation cannot increase that capi- 
tal, if it be tempted by the higher prices to the 
business protected, it must be taken from some 
other business or investment. If there are more 
workers in factories there will be fewer artisans. 
If there are more workers in shops there will be 
fewer farmers. If there are more in the towns 
there will be fewer in the country. The only 
effect of protection, therefore, in this point of 
view, can be to take capital from some employ- 
ment to put it into another, that the aggregate 
disposable capital cannot be increased, nor the 
aggregate development of the resources of a 
country be greater with a tariff than without. 
But, secondly, it is said that protection in- 
creases the number of industries, thereby diver- 
sifying labor and making a variety in the occu- 
pations of a people who otherwise might be 
confined to a single branch of employment. 
This argument proceeds upon the assumption 
that there would be no diversification of labor 
without protection. In other words, it is as- 
sumed that but for protection our people would 
devote themselves to agriculture. This, how- 



384 FRANK II. HURD. 

ever, is not true. Even if a community were 
purely agricultural, the necessities of the situa- 
tion would make diversification of industry. 
There must be blacksmiths, and shoemakers, 
and millers, and merchants, and carpenters, and 
other artisans. To each one of these employ- 
ments, as population increases, more and more 
will devote themselves, and with each year new 
demands will spring up, which will create new 
industries to supply them. I was born in the 
midst of a splendid farming country. The 
business of nine tenths of the people of my 
native county was farming. My intelligent 
boyhood was spent there from 1850 to i860, 
when there was no tariff for protection. There 
were thriving towns for the general trading. 
There were woollen mills and operatives. There 
were flouring mills and millers. There were 
iron founders and their employes. There 
were artisans of every description. There were 
grocers and merchants, with every variety 
of goods and wares for sale ; there were banks 
and bankers ; there was all the diversification 
of industry that a thriving, industrious, and in- 
telligent community required ; not established 
by protection nor by government aid, but grow- 
ing naturally out of the wants and necessities of 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 385 

the people. Such a diversification is always 
healthful, because it is natural, and will con- 
tinue so long as the people are industrious and 
thrifty. The diversification which protection 
makes is forced and artificial. Suppose protec- 
tion had come to my native county to further 
diversify industries. It would have begun by 
giving higher prices to some industry already 
established, or profits greater than the average 
rate to some new industry which it would have 
started. This would have disturbed the natural 
order. It would necessarily have embarrassed 
some interests to help the protected ones. The 
loss in the most favorable view would have been 
equal to the gain, and besides trade would in- 
evitably have been annoyed by the obstruction 
of its natural channels. 

The worst feature of this kind of diversified 
industry is that the protected ones never will- 
ingly give up the government aid. They scare 
at competition as a child at a ghost. As soon 
as the markets seem against them, they rush to 
Congress for further help. They are never con- 
tent with the protection they have ; they are 
always eager for more. In this dependence 
upon the government bounty the persons pro- 
tected learn to distrust themselves ; and pro- 



386 FRANK H. HURD. 

tection therefore inevitably destroys that manly, 
sturdy spirit of individuality and independence 
which should characterize the successful Ameri- 
can business man. 

Thirdly, it is said that protection gives in- 
creased employment to labor and enhances the 
wages of workingmen. For a long time no po- 
sition was more strenuously insisted upon by 
the advocates of the protective system than 
that the wages of labor would be increased under 
it. At this point in the discussion I shall only 
undertake to show that it is impossible that pro- 
tection should produce this result. What de- 
termines the amount of wages paid ? Some 
maintain that it is the amount of the wage fund 
existing at the time that the labor is done. 
Under this theory it is claimed that, at any 
given time, there is a certain amount of capital 
to be applied to the payment of wages, as cer- 
tain and fixed as though its amount had been 
determined in advance. Others maintain that 
the amount of wages is fixed by what the 
laborer makes, or, in other words, by the 
product of his work, and that, therefore, his 
wage is determined by the efificiency of his 
labor alone. Both these views are partly true. 
The wages of the laborer are undoubtedly de- 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 387 

termined by the efficiency of his work, but the 
aggregate amount paid for labor cannot exceed 
the amount properly chargeable to the wage 
fund without in a little time diminishing the 
profits of production and ultimately the quan- 
tity of labor employed. 

But, whichever theory be true, it is clear that 
protection can add nothing to the amount of 
wages. It cannot increase the amount of cap- 
ital applicable to the payment of wages, unless 
it can be shown that the aggregate capital of a 
country can be increased by legislation ; nor 
can it add to the efficiency of labor, for that 
depends upon individual effort exclusively. A 
man who makes little in a day now may in a 
year make much more in the same time ; his 
labor has become more efficient. Whether this 
shall be done depends on the taste, tempera- 
ment, application, aptitude, and skill of the in- 
dividual. No one will pretend that protection 
can increase the aggregate of these qualities in 
the labor of the country. The result is that it 
is impossible for protection, either by adding to 
the wage fund or by increasing the efficiency 
of labor, to enhance the wages of laboring men, 
a theory which I shall shortly show is incontro- 
vertibly established by the facts. 



388 FRANK H. HURD. 

I will now, Mr. Chairman, briefly present a 
few of the principal objections to a tariff for 
protection. As has been shown, the basis of 
protection is an increase in the price of the pro- 
tected products. Who pays this increased 
price? I shall not stop now to consider the 
argument often urged that it is paid by the for- 
eign producer, because it can be easily shown 
to the contrary by every one's experience. I 
shall for this argument assume it as demon- 
strated that the increase of price which protec- 
tion makes is paid by the consumer. This sug- 
gests the first great objection to protection, that 
it compels the consumer to pay more for goods 
than they are really worth, ostensibly to help the 
business of a producer. Now consumers con- 
stitute the vast majority of the people. The 
producers of protected articles are few in com- 
parison with them. It is true that most men 
are both producers and consumers. But, for 
the great majority, there is little or no protec- 
tion for what they produce, but large protec- 
tion for what they consume. The tariff is prin- 
cipally levied upon woollen goods, lumber, fur- 
niture, stoves and other manufactured articles 
of iron, and upon sugar and salt. The necessi- 
ties of life are weighted with the burden. It is 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 389 

out of the necessities of the people, therefore, 
that the money is realized to support the pro- 
tective system. I say, Mr. Chairman, that it is 
beyond the sphere of true governmental power 
to tax one man to help the business of another. 
It is, by power, taking money from one to give 
it to another. This is robbery, nothing more 
nor less. When a man earns a dollar it is his 
own ; and no power of reasoning can justify the 
legislative power in taking it from him except 
for the uses of the government. 

Yet, Mr. Chairman, the present tariff takes 
hundreds of millions of dollars every year from 
the farmer, the laborer, and other consumers, 
under the claim of enriching the manufacturer. 
It may not be much for each one to contribute, 
yet in the aggregate it is an enormous sum. 
For many, too, it is very much. The statistics 
will show that every head of a family who re- 
ceives four hundred dollars a year in wages 
pays at least one hundred dollars on account of 
protection. Put such a tax on all incomes and 
the country would be in a ferment of excite- 
ment until it was removed. But it is upon the 
poor and lowly that the tax is placed, and their 
voices are not often heard in shaping the poli- 
cies of tariff legislation. I repeat, the product 



390 FRANK H. HURD. 

of one's labor is his own. It is his highest 
right, subject only to the necessities of the 
government, to do with it as he pleases. Pro- 
tection invades, destroys that right. It ought 
to be destroyed, until every American freeman 
can spend his money where it will be of the 
most service to him. 

To illustrate the cost of protection to the 
consumer, consider its operation in increasing 
the price of two or three of the leading arti- 
cles protected. Take paper for example. The 
duty on that commodity is twenty per cent, ad 
valorem. Most of the articles which enter into 
its manufacture or are required in the process 
of making it are increased in price by protec- 
tion. The result is that the price of paper to 
the consumer is increased nearly fifteen per 
cent. ; that is, if the tariff were taken off paper 
and the articles used in its manufacture, paper 
would be fifteen per cent, cheaper to the buyer. 
The paper-mills for five years have produced 
nearly one hundred millions of dollars' worth 
of paper a year. The consumers have been 
compelled to pay fifteen millions a year to the 
manufacturer more than the paper could have 
been bought for without the tariff. In five 
years this has amounted to $75,000,000, an im- 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 39 1 

mense sum paid to protection. It is a tax upon 
books and newspapers ; it is a tax upon intelli- 
gence ; it is a premium upon ignorance. So 
heavy had the burden of this tax become that 
every newspaper man in the district I have the 
honor to represent has appealed to Congress to 
take the duty off. The government has de- 
rived little revenue from the paper duty. It has 
gone almost entirely to the manufacturer, who 
himself has not been benefited as anticipated, 
as will presently be seen. These burdens have 
been imposed to protect the paper manufacturer 
against the foreigner, in face of the confident 
prediction made by one of the most experienced 
paper men in the country, that if all protection 
were taken off paper and the material used in 
its manufacture, the manufacturer would be 
able to successfully compete with the foreigner 
in nearly every desirable market in the world. 

Take blankets also for example. The tariff 
on coarse blankets is nearly one hundred per 
cent, ad valorem. They can be bought in most 
of the markets of the world for two dollars a 
pair. Yet our poor, who use the most of that 
grade of blankets, are compelled to pay about 
four dollars a pair. The government derives 
little revenue from it, as the importation of 



392 FRANK H. HURD. 

these blankets for years has been trifling. This 
tax has been a heavy burden upon the poor 
during this severe winter, a tax running into the 
millions to support protection. Heaven save a 
country from a system which begrudges to the 
shivering poor the blankets to make them com- 
fortable in the winter and the cold ! 

Secondly, protection has diminished the in- 
come of the laborer from his wages. The first 
factor in the ascertainment of the value of 
wages is their purchasing power, or how much 
can be bought with them. If in one country 
the wages are five dollars a day and in another 
only one dollar, if the laborer can in the one 
country with the one dollar, purchase more of 
the necessary articles required in daily con- 
sumption, he, in fact, is better paid than the 
former in the other who gets five dollars a day. 
Admit for a moment that protection raises the 
wages of the laborer, it also raises the price of 
nearly all the necessaries of life, and what he 
makes in wages he more than loses in the in- 
crease of prices of what he is obliged to buy. 
As already stated, a head of a family who earns 
3400 per year is compelled to pay $100 more for 
what he needs, on account of protection. What 
difference is it to him whether the $100 are taken 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 393 

out of his wages before they are paid, or taken 
from him afterward in the increased price of arti- 
cles he cannot get along without ? In both 
cases he really receives only $300 for his year's 
labor. The statistics show that the average in- 
creased cost of twelve articles most required in 
daily consumption in 1874 over i860 was 
ninety-two per cent., while the average increase 
of wages of eight artisans, cabinet-makers, 
coopers, carpenters, painters, shoemakers, tail- 
ors, tanners, and tinsmiths, was only sixty per 
cent., demonstrating that the purchasing power 
of labor had under protection in thirteen years 
depreciated 19.5 per cent. But protection has 
not even raised the nominal wages in most of 
the unprotected industries. I find that the 
wages of the farm hand, the day laborer, and 
the ordinary artisan are in most places now no 
higher than they were in i860. 

But it is confidently asserted that the wages 
of laborers in the protected industries are higher 
because of protection. Admit it. I have not 
the figures for 1880, but in 1870 there were not 
500,000 of them ; but of the laborers in other 
industries there were 12,000,000, exclusive of 
those in agriculture, who were 6,000,000 more. 
Why should the wages of the half million be 



394 FRANK H. HURD. 

increased beyond their natural rate, while those 
of the others remain unchanged ? More — why 
should the wages of the 18,000,000 be dimin- 
ished that those of the half million may be 
increased ? For an increase cannot be made in 
the wage rate of one class without a propor- 
tionate decrease in that of others. But the 
wages of labor in protected industries are not 
permanently increased by protection. Another 
very important factor in ascertaining the value 
of wages is the continuance or the steadiness of 
the employment. Two dollars a day for half 
the year is no more than a dollar a day for the 
whole year. Employment in most protected 
industries is spasmodic. In the leading indus- 
tries for the past ten years employment has not 
averaged more than three fourths of the time, 
and not at very high wages. Within the last 
year manufacturers of silk, carpets, nails and 
many other articles of iron, of various kinds of 
glassware and furniture, and coal producers 
have shut down their works for a part of the 
time, or reduced the hours of labor. Produc- 
tion has been too great. To stop this and pre- 
vent the reduction of profits through increasing 
competition, the first thing done is to diminish 
the production, thus turning employes out of 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 395 

employment. Wages are diminished or stopped 
until times are flush again. With the time 
estimated in which the laborers are not at 
work, the average rate of wages for the ten 
years preceding 1880 did not equal the wages 
in similar industries for the ten years preceding 
i860 under a revenue tariff. Indeed, in many 
branches the wages have not been so high as 
those received by the pauper labor, so-called, in 
Europe. But it is manifest that the wages in 
these industries cannot for any long period be 
higher than the average rate in the community, 
for, if the wages be higher, labor will crowd 
into the employments thus favored until the 
rate is brought down to the general level. So 
true is this, that it is admitted by many protec- 
tionists that wages are not higher in the pro- 
tected industries than in others. -5^ * * 

Thirdly, the effect of protection is disastrous 
to most of the protected industries themselves. 
We have seen that many of them have in re- 
cent years been compelled to diminish produc- 
tion. The cause of this is manifest. Produc- 
tion confines them to the American market. 
The high prices they are compelled to pay for 
protected materials which enter into the manu- 
facture of their products disable them from 



396 FRANK H. HURD. 

going into the foreign market. The profits 
which they make under the first impulse of pro- 
tection invite others into the same business. 
As a result, therefore, more goods are made 
than the American market can consume. Prices 
go down to some extent through the competi- 
tion, but rarely under the cost of production, 
increased, as we have seen, by the enhanced 
price of material required. The losses threat- 
ened by such competition are sought to be 
averted by the diminution of production. Com- 
binations of those interested are formed to stop 
work or reduce it until the stock on hand has 
been consumed. Production then begins again 
and continues until the same necessity calls 
again for the same remedy. But this remedy 
is arbitrary, capricious, and unsatisfactory. 
Some will not enter into the combination at all. 
Others will secretly violate the agreement from 
the beginning. Others still, when their surplus 
stock has been sold, and before the general 
price has risen, will begin to manufacture again. 
There is no power to enforce any bargain they 
have made, and they find the plan only im- 
perfectly curing the diflficulty. They remain un- 
certain what to do, embarrassed and doubtful 
as to the future. They have through protec- 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 397 

tion violated the natural laws of supply and de- 
mand, and human regulations are powerless to 
relieve them from the penalty. 

Take, as an illustration of the operation of 
the system, the article of paper. One of the 
first effects of the general tariff was to increase 
the price of nearly every thing the manufac- 
turer required to make the paper. Fifteen mil- 
lions of dollars a year through the protection 
are taken from the consumer. The manufac- 
turer himself is able to retain but a small part 
of it, as he is obliged to pay to some other pro- 
tected industry for its products, they in turn to 
some others who furnished them with protected 
articles for their use, and so on to the end. 
The result is that nominal prices are raised all 
around ; the consumers pay the fifteen millions, 
while nobody receives any substantial benefit, 
because what one makes in the increased price 
of his product he loses in the increased price he 
is obliged to pay for the required products of 
others. The consumer is the loser, and though 
competition may occasionally reduce prices for 
him to a reasonable rate, it never to any ap- 
preciable extent compensates him for the losses 
he sustains through the enhanced price which 
the protective system inevitably causes. 



398 FRANK H. HURD. 

It is not to be disputed that many of the 
protected manufacturers have grown rich. In 
very many cases I think it can be demonstrated 
that their wealth has resulted from some patent 
which has given them a monopoly in particular 
branches of manufacturing, or from some other 
advantage which they have employed exclu- 
sively in their business. In such cases they 
would have prospered without protection as 
with it. I think there are few, except in the 
very inception of a manufacturing enterprise, 
or in abnormal cases growing out of war or des- 
truction of property, or the combinations of 
large amounts of capital, where protection alone 
has enriched men. The result is the robbery 
of the consumer with no ultimate good to most 
of the protective industries. 

At a meeting of the textile manufacturers in 
Philadelphia the other day, one of the leading 
men in that interest said : " The fact is that 
the textile manufacturers of Philadelphia, the 
centre of the American trade, are fast approach- 
ing a crisis, and realize that something must be 
done, and that soon. Cotton and woollen mills 
are fast springing up over the South and West, 
and the prospects are that we will soon lose 
much of our trade in the coarse fabrics by rea- 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 399 

son of cheap competition. The only thing we 
can do, therefore, is to turn our attention to 
the higher plane, and endeavor to make goods 
equal to those imported. We cannot do this 
now, because we have not a sufficient supply 
either of the culture which begets designs, or of 
the skill which manipulates the fibres." 

What a commentary this upon protection, 
which has brought to such a crisis one of the 
chief industries protected, and which is here 
confessed to have failed, after twenty years, to 
enable it to compete even in our own markets 
with foreign goods of the finer quality ! What 
is true of textile manufacturing is also true of 
many other industries. What remedy, then, 
will afford the American manufacturer relief? 
Not the one here suggested of increasing the 
manufacture of goods of finer quality, for, aside 
from the impracticability of the plan, this will 
only aggravate the difficulty by adding to the 
aggregate stock in the home market. * * * 
The American demand cannot consume what 
they produce. They must therefore enlarge 
their market or stop production. To adopt the 
latter course is to invite ruin. The market 
cannot be increased in this country. It must 
be found in other countries. Foreign markets 



400 FRANK H. HURD. 

must be sought. But these cannot be opened 
as long as we close our markets to their products, 
with which alone, in most instances, they can 
buy ; in other words, as long as we continue the 
protective system. 

I say, therefore, to the American manufac- 
turer, sooner or later you must choose between 
the alternatives of ruin or the abandonment of 
protection. Why hesitate in the decision ? Are 
not Canada and South America and Mexico 
your natural markets? England now supplies 
them with almost all the foreign goods they 
buy. Why should not you ? Your coal and 
iron lie together in the mountain side, and can 
almost be dropped without carriage into your 
furnaces ; while in England the miners must go 
thousands of feet under the earth for those pro- 
ducts. * * * The situation is yours. Break 
down your protective barrier. All the world 
will soon do the same. Their walls will disap- 
pear when ours fall. Open every market of the 
world to your products ; give steady employ- 
ment to your laborers. In a little while you 
will have the reward which nature always gives 
to those who obey her laws, and will escape the 
ruin which many of your most intelligent opera- 
tors see impending over your industries. 



TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY. 40I 

I have not time to-day to more than refer to 
the ruinous effect of protection upon our carry- 
ing trade. In 1856, seventy-five per cent, of 
the total value of our imports and exports was 
carried in American vessels ; while in 1879 but 
seventeen per cent, was carried in such vessels, 
and in 1880 the proportion was still less. In 
1855, 381 ships and barks were built in the 
United States, while in 1879 there were only 
37. It is a question of very few years at 
this rate until American vessels and the 
American flag will disappear from the high 
seas. Protection has more than all else to do 
with the prostration of this trade. It accom- 
plishes this result (i) by enhancing the price of 
the materials which enter into the construction 
of vessels, so that our ship-builders cannot com- 
pete with foreigners engaged in the same 
business ; (2) by increasing the cost of domestic 
production so that American manufactured 
goods cannot profitably be exported ; and (3) by 
disabling our merchants from bringing back on 
their return trips foreign cargoes in exchange 
for our products. 

Nor will I say any thing as to the increase of 
the crime of smuggling under protection, a 
crime which has done incalculable harm to 



402 FRANK H. HURD. 

honest dealers, particularly on the border, and 
a crime out of which some of the largest fortunes 
in the country have been made. 

There are many who will admit the abstract 
justice of much that I have said who profess to 
believe that it will not do to disturb the tariff 
now. But for the protectionist that time never 
comes. When the depression in business was 
universal, they said you must not disturb the 
tariff now, because the times are so hard and 
there is so much suffering. Now, when business 
has improved, they say you must not interfere 
with the tariff, because times are good and you 
may bring suffering again. When the present 
tariff was first levied it was defended as a tem- 
porary expedient only, required as a necessity 
by war. Now that a quarter of a century 
nearly has passed by and peace has been restored 
for fifteen years, the advocates for protection are 
as determined to hold on to the government 
bounty as ever. If they are to be consulted 
upon the subject as to when the people shall 
have relief, the system will be perpetual. 

It is said we must not disturb the tariff be- 
cause we must raise so much revenue. I do not 
propose to disturb it to diminish revenue, but 
to increase it. The plan I propose will add one 



TARIFF FOR RE VENUE ONL Y. 403 

fifth at least to the revenue of the country. It 
is protection I propose to get rid of, not revenue. 
It has been well said that revenue ceases where 
protection begins. 

It is claimed that by taking away protection 
you will embarrass many industries by compel- 
ling them to close up and discharge their employ- 
es. I do not believe that the changing of the 
present tariff to a revenue tariff will produce 
this result. I believe that at once every manu- 
facturer will make more in the diminished cost 
of production than he will lose in the taking 
away of protection. But if there should be 
danger to any industry I would provide against 
it in the law which changes the tariff so that if 
there should be any displacement of labor there 
will be no loss in consequence. 

No more perfect illustration of the effect of 
free trade has been shown than in the history 
of the United States. Very much of our pros- 
perity is due to the fact that the productions of 
each State can be sold in every other State 
without restriction. During the war the most 
potent argument for the cause of the Union was 
found in the apprehension that disunion meant 
restriction of commerce, and particularly the 
placing of the mouth of the Mississippi River 



404 . FRANK H. HURD. 

under foreign co'ntrol. The war was fought, 
therefore, to maintain free trade, and the victory 
was the triumph of free trade. The Union every 
day exhibits the advantages of the system. 

Are these due to the accident of a State be- 
ing a member of that Union or to the beneficent 
principle of the system itself? What would 
prevent similar results following if, subject only 
to the necessities of government, it were ex- 
tended to Mexico, to Canada, to South America, 
to the world ? In such extension the United 
States have every thing to gain, nothing to 
lose. This country would soon become the 
supply house of the world. We will soon have 
cattle and harvests enough for all nations. Our 
cotton is everywhere in demand. It is again 
king. Its crown has been restored, and in 
all the markets of the world it waves its royal 
sceptre. Out of our coal and minerals can 
be manufactured every thing which human in- 
genuity can devise. Our gold and silver mines 
will supply the greater part of the precious 
metals for the use of the arts and trade. 

With the opportunity of unrestricted ex- 
change of these products, how limitless the 
horizon of our possibilities ! Let American 
adventurousness and genius be free upon the 



TARIFF FOR RE VENUE ONL Y. 405 

high seas, to go wherever they please and bring 
back whatever they please, and the oceans will 
swarm with American sails, and the land will 
laugh with the plenty within its borders. The 
trade of Tyre and Sidon, the far extending 
commerce of the Venetian republic, the wealth- 
producing traffic of the Netherlands, will be 
as dreams in contrast with the stupendous reality 
which American enterprise will develop in our 
own generation. Through the humanizing in- 
fluence of the trade thus encouraged, I see 
nations become the friends of nations, and the 
causes of war disappear. I see the influence of 
the great republic in the amelioration of the 
condition of the poor and the oppressed in 
every land, and in the moderation of the 
arbitrariness of power. Upon the wings of free 
trade will be carried the seeds of free govern- 
ment, to be scattered everywhere to grow 
and ripen into harvests of free peoples in every 
nation under the sun. 



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